The rapid use of antibiotics by thousands of people cooled the hot spots in last fall’s anthrax-by-mail terrorist attacks, holding down the inhaled infections and deaths, researchers say.
The number of victims could have been much higher than the 11 cases of inhaled anthrax and the five deaths, said Ron Brookmeyer, first author of a study appearing Friday in the journal Science.
At least 17 and as many as 50 people could have become ill with the most serious form of anthrax if not for the use of antibiotics by about 5,000 people potentially exposed in Florida, New Jersey and Washington, Brookmeyer said.
“We found that the antibiotics cut the cases by half,” said Brookmeyer, a biostatistican at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
Brookmeyer said the study focused only on the three confirmed sites that potentially exposed large numbers of people to letters laced with anthrax spores: a media office in Florida, where two people were infected; a postal building in New Jersey, where two were infected; and a mail-handling building in Washington, where four were infected.
The study validates the quick response of public officials to the crisis, he said.
