Anthrax-like illness puzzles doctors

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Anthrax-like illness puzzles doctors

Postal worker tests negative for disease, but shows symptoms

An employee at the Brentwood Postal Facility, where two workers died of

exposure of anthrax last October, has been sick with anthrax-like symptoms

for two months.

BALTIMORE, Jan. 11 - The case of an ailing postal inspector who tests

negative for anthrax but was exposed to it and displays symptoms similar to

it raises new questions about the disease.

THE WORKER, a 37-year-old man, has been sick for more than two

months and is currently recuperating at home.

He inspected equipment in the Brentwood postal facility, which

handled a letter containing anthrax spores. Two workers there died from the

disease.

After anthrax was first discovered at the plant, the postal inspector

was given Cipro as a preventive. He took it one day, missed two doses, and

began feeling ill shortly after that. He was given a blood test, and it

turned up negative for anthrax, but his doctors say the antibiotic could

have wiped out signs of the bacteria.

But chest X-rays also failed to show the telltale signs of the

disease. Other tests that might have picked up signs of anthrax apparently

were not given.

Without any medical evidence, the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention is not classifying the case as anthrax.

Still, the man's doctors at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore reported in

the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association this week that they

strongly suspect he suffers from anthrax.

The case could expand the spectrum of what is considered an anthrax

infection, his doctors said.

" It raises the question of: Is there a range of illness? " said Dr.

Tyler Cymet, lead author of the case report. " Can you get very ill just by

being exposed and not getting the disease? "

Clinicians are open to the possibility that patients can react

differently to the same infection, and that there may be different ways

anthrax can manifest itself, said Dr. Poland of the Mayo Clinic.

" The likelihood of this being all or nothing - that you get exposed

and without treatment you die - is likely not going to be the full story

here, " said Poland, who advises the CDC on bioterrorism drugs and vaccines.

The doctors did not identify the patient, but The (Baltimore) Sun

identified him as R. Paliscak Jr. of Edgewater.

Cymet, who treated Paliscak about a week after his exposure to

anthrax, said his patient had low oxygen levels in his blood, severe

shortness of breath, high fever, fluid in his lungs, a cough, swollen lymph

nodes and chest pain.

Tests ruled out fungal and viral infections and autoimmune disease.

His symptoms improved, but then he relapsed, and he was hospitalized for 45

days while he received intravenous antibiotics.

The worker's symptoms, Cymet said, were " just as serious " as those

associated with anthrax.

Through Cymet, Paliscak declined to be interviewed. His wife,

, who works at the osteopathic hospital where her husband was

treated, told The Sun, " It's been beyond an ordeal. The good part is, unlike

a lot of other people, he's still alive. "

© 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved