Bacillus anthracis distribution

Events involving deliberate or accidental distribution of bacterial pathogens into our everyday environment have clearly defined the need for a sensitive, specific, and rapid method of bacterial detection. Bioterrorism was first introduced in the United States in 1984 with the Salmonella typhimurium attack in The Dalles, Oregon, by a cult group attempting to affect a local election.1 As a result of this act 751 people contracted salmonellosis, which totally overwhelmed the hospitals and medical clinics with patients. Later our society became keenly aware of the potential of bioterrorism during the last four months of 2001 when Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) spores were sent through the US mail in an envelope to several locations. These events had... 

Anthrax Among Decontamination/Cleanup Workers Responding to an Intentional Distribution of Bacillus anthracis... 

TABLE 1. Data Sources for Anthrax-Outbreak Localities (1957-2005) Used to Develop Ecological Niche Models of Bacillus anthracis in the Contiguous United States and to Project the Distribution in Mexico... 

Modeling Scenario 1 Modeling the Current Distribution of Bacillus anthracis in the United States... 

Figure 6. The known distribution of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) for the contiguous United States is shown in gray. In total, this represents 81.9% of the total U.S. landscape. The black shading indicates the portion of white-tailed deer distribution that overlaps with the potential distribution of Bacillus anthracis (-35.9% of the total deer landscape), illustrating the drastically reduced portion of the landscape where the pathogen and host species might naturally overlap.

Figure 8. A. The potential geographic distribution of Bacillus anthracis in the contiguous United States based on a nine-variable ecological niche modeling experiment based on current climatic conditions from the HADCM3 B2 future climate scenario. B. The potential geographic distribution of B. anthracis in 2050 using the future climate data from the HADCM3 B2 climate scenario. A threshold of six models or better was selected to visualize these analyses.

Bacillus cereus is a gram-positive, facultatively aerobic sporeformer whose spores do not swell the sporangium. These characteristics, along with specific biochemical features, are used to differentiate B. cereus from other species of the genus Bacillus (i.e., B. thuringoemsos and B. anthracis). The organism is widely distributed in nature and in food. It is commonly found in soil, milk, cereals, starches, herbs, spices, and other dried food stuffs. 

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