A DEADLY terrorist weapon could be buried in the backyards of Darwin’s northern suburbs, US scientists fear.
US authorities say melioidosis – commonly known as Nightcliff Gardeners Disease – is a potential bioterror threat. The US Government believes the tropical disease, caused by soil-dwelling bacteria, could become the next anthrax-style bioterrorism threat. Melioidosis caught the attention of the US Government when it realised the naturally-occurring bacteria had the potential to be used as biological weapon.
Australian and American scientists are now on the verge of a breakthrough in the early diagnosis of the disease which killed 10 people in the Northern Territory in the wet season.
Professor Bart Currie, who works in the infectious diseases department at Royal Darwin Hospital and is the melioidosis project manager at Menzies School of Health Research, said interest in the bacteria from countries outside the endemic regions had grown dramatically in the past 10 years, particularly since the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US.
“And increasingly there are return travellers coming back from the tropical areas to Europe and the US,” he said. It is also widely recognised that many soldiers returning to the US after spending lengthy periods in damp, humid and muddy environments during the Vietnam war presented with melioidosis infections weeks, and years, later.
A fact sheet compiled by the US Department of Homeland Security lists melioidosis – scientifically known as Burkholderia pseudomallei – as a category B potential bioterror threat.
While it is believed melioidosis has never been used in a biological attack, Dr Currie said the category B listing was justified. “In Australia our interest in it is that it has caused disease for some decades,” he told the Sunday Territorian.
“It is resistant to commonly used antibiotics. And this bacteria is behaving very much like a number of other organisms that are well recognised as potential bio-threat agents, such as anthrax, such as plague.” Dr Currie said melioidosis was very similar to the Glanders bacteria, which was used as a biological weapon in WWI.
He said Menzies was also doing research to examine the ability of the melioidosis bacterium to aerosolise during severe weather events, and be inhaled. Melioidosis is an infection that can be contracted through contact with soil in northern Australia and South-East Asia.
Just a few years ago the United States National Institute of Health began funding research at the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, in collaboration with the Northern Arizona University, to develop a test that will enable doctors to diagnose patients more rapidly and begin Melioidosis-specific treatment sooner. Patients currently have to wait up to a week to get an answer.
While mortality rates in Melioidisis patients have dropped from 30 per cent to 15 per cent in Australia in recent years because of improvements in intensive care treatment, it is hoped a more refined diagnostic test will further reduce mortality in Australia and in Asia, where the figure in some countries is closer to 75 per cent.
Staff at the NT Centre for Disease Control are busy finalising the statistics, which so far show that 77 people, mostly with pre-existing chronic medical conditions, contracted the bacterium this wet season. Researchers blame a longer, wetter than usual wet season for the three-fold increase. Since records began 20 years ago, about 600 people across the Top End have contracted the disease, which causes chest infections, skin ulcers and prostate abscesses, and 85 have died.
New research suggests the bacterium did, in fact, originate in northern Australia and spread to Asia during the last Ice Age, 15,000 to 40,000 years.
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