Word: anthrax
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...study published in the January 2004 issue of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, the Harvard researchers identified six molecules that could act as protease inhibitors, attaching themselves to the protease and preventing it from binding with anthrax lethal factor. This, in turn, would block the activation of the toxins...
...Anthrax toxins were proven lethal in 2001, after five individuals died as a result of exposure to anthrax spores contained in a series of mailings across the U.S., according to Lewis C. Cantley, senior author of the study and chief of the Division of Signal Transduction at Beth Israel. The deceased victims were successfully rid of anthrax bacteria by antibiotics, thus proving that buildups of anthrax toxin—which would not have been counteracted by the antibiotics—must have been the cause of death...
...estimated 75 percent of inhalation anthrax cases prove fatal, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This high mortality rate may result from the deceptive initial symptoms of inhalation anthrax infection, which resemble those of influenza. By the time a correct diagnosis is rendered, the anthrax bacteria may have already released enough toxin to kill a host—rendering antibiotics useless...
...research comes on the heels of a Dec. 2 announcement by Avanir Pharmaceuticals that it is developing an antibiotic that, taken just once before anthrax infection, would both kill anthrax bacteria and prevent anthrax toxin from entering cells...
Avanir’s antibiotic would be more powerful and possibly more effective than the current anthrax vaccines that require booster shots every year to remain potent and that combat only anthrax bacteria. But unlike the Avanir antibiotic, Cantley said he hoped that a drug designed to inhibit anthrax lethal factor would be effectively administrable after contraction of anthrax, thereby lessening the need to inoculate large populations and saving lives in cases of late diagnosis...