Six years after the attacks of Sept. 11, some experts believe it’s not a question of whether there will be another attack, but a question of when. As more soldiers are deployed in the global fight against terrorism, scientists at UTSA and other research facilities around the country are quietly focusing their microscopes on the “smallest” of threats—bacteria that can be used as biological weapons.

One-celled creatures may be the simplest forms of life, but they can become deadly when developed into an aerosol and used for bioterrorism, says Professor Karl Klose, director of UTSA’s South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Funded by two awards from the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, UTSA researchers are working to help develop vaccines against Francisella tularensis, a bacteria that causes the disease tularemia. Klose, a professor of microbiology; Judy Teale, a professor of immunology; and Bernard Arulanandam, associate professor of immunology, are involved in the tularemia projects.

What makes their work especially important is that Francisella tularensis is one of the most lethal bacteria being studied in laboratories as a biological warfare agent. It is comparable to anthrax and the plague, Klose says.

What is tularemia?
Tularemia is a rare disease found in nature in small mammals, including rabbits, hares and rodents. Most people who contract the disease are infected when they handle the skin or meat of a diseased animal and the bacteria enters their body through a cut on the hand. Other common ways to get tularemia include eating infected meat, drinking contaminated water or being bitten by blood-sucking insects such as ticks, deerflies or mosquitoes that have had contact with infected animals. Still, tularemia, also called rabbit fever or rabbit skinner’s disease, is not easily acquired.

“Tularemia is not very dangerous if acquired by the usual route,” Klose says. “People are very likely to survive, and the disease is treatable with antibiotics.”

Tularemia, however, is much more lethal when the bacteria are inhaled. In aerosol form, it would take only 10 to 15 organisms to cause disease, according to the NIAID. The disease progresses rapidly, is difficult to diagnose because it is so rare, and has a mortality rate of about 30 percent if not treated with antibiotics, Klose explains. This, coupled with the bacteria’s ability to survive in nature, makes it an even more suitable candidate for biological warfare.

The idea of using bacteria as a weapon is not new. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, historians estimate that more than 200,000 Chinese were killed in germ warfare experiments before World War II.

“The Japanese experimented on Chinese [prisoners of war] during World War II,” Klose says. “The U.S. and Soviet Union did lots of research on biological weapons during the Cold War. We stopped our research in 1973, when President [Richard] Nixon signed an agreement with the Soviets to stop all bioweapons work and the U.S. destroyed its stockpile at that time, but the Soviets continued with their work until the Soviet Union collapse in the late 1980s.”

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