Animals as Sentinels of Bioterrorism Agents

Peter Rabinowitz,Matthew Wilcox,Daniel Chudnov,Zimra Gordon,Joshua Dein,Ann Liu,Lynda Odofin

doi:10.3201/eid1204.051120

Abstract

We conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature from 1966 to 2005 to determine whether animals could provide early warning of a bioterrorism attack, serve as markers for ongoing exposure risk, and amplify or propagate a bioterrorism outbreak. We found evidence that, for certain bioterrorism agents, pets, wildlife, or livestock could provide early warning and that for other agents, humans would likely manifest symptoms before illness could be detected in animals. After an acute attack, active surveillance of wild or domestic animal populations could help identify many ongoing exposure risks. If certain bioterrorism agents found their way into animal populations, they could spread widely through animal-to-animal transmission and prove difficult to control. The public health infrastructure must look beyond passive surveillance of acute animal disease events to build capacity for active surveillance and intervention efforts to detect and control ongoing outbreaks of disease in domestic and wild animal populations.

Highlights

We conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature from 1966 to 2005 to determine whether animals could provide early warning of a bioterrorism attack, serve as markers for ongoing exposure risk, and amplify or propagate a bioterrorism outbreak
In part because of such recommendations, calls have been made for enhanced veterinary surveillance for outbreaks of animal disease caused by bioterrorism agents and better communication between animal health and human health professionals
For a number of agents, this review found evidence that animals might be affected before human populations

Summary

Introduction

We conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature from 1966 to 2005 to determine whether animals could provide early warning of a bioterrorism attack, serve as markers for ongoing exposure risk, and amplify or propagate a bioterrorism outbreak. In part because of such recommendations, calls have been made for enhanced veterinary surveillance for outbreaks of animal disease caused by bioterrorism agents and better communication between animal health and human health professionals For such efforts to succeed, the relevance to human health of disease events in animals must be established. Animals could provide an early warning to humans if clinical signs could be detected before human illness emerged or soon enough to allow preventive measures to be initiated This early detection could occur because an animal species had increased susceptibility to a particular agent, because the disease caused by the agent had a shorter incubation period, or because animals were exposed sooner (or at more intense and continuous levels) than the human population (2). Detecting the agent in such mobile populations could signal the ongoing spread of the agent and provide an opportunity for interventions to prevent further spread

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Conclusion