Spore concentration and modified host resistance as cause of anthrax outbreaks: A practitioner’s perspective

摘要

Most of what is written about the cause of anthrax outbreaks is by professional academics in the fields of microbiology, epidemiology, and pathology. Little has been written by veterinary practitioners as it is normally not part of their job. Academic contributions could be closer to the actual fact and could be more useful if they recognized a practitioner’s humble experiential intuition. Hugh-Jones and Blackburn (1) comprehensively reviewed virtually all the theories on the etiology of anthrax outbreaks. They append a summary of 4 points that emphasize the need for more information on the existence or non-existence of spores in soil, the role of tabanids, latent infections, and modified host resistance. They note that the cause-and-effect answers that would scientifically demonstrate the resolutions to these questions would be an enormous undertaking. However, answers exist from work already done.