Another laboratory acquired infection may have occurred in a University of Chicago building where there are 2 years a researcher contracted the plague and died later. Last month, a researcher who worked in the same general area of the laboratory was hospitalized with a skin infection caused by a common bacterium to study in his lab.
The researcher became infected Bacillus cereus , which can cause foodborne infections, while working on a project led by microbiologist Olaf Schneewind, according to the university. She was hospitalized on August 27; after receiving surgery and antibiotics, she was released. In his laboratory, where B. cereus was investigated in biosafety level 2 conditions (at the lower end of four levels of biosafety), the university suspended the search for decontaminating the area as a precautionary measure (it was planned to open later this week).
The researcher was probably exposed through an open wound. The university is still investigating if it acquired the infection in the laboratory, said the spokesman for the University of Chicago Medical Center Lorna Wong. B. cereus is not contagious as long as the standard procedures as good hand washing hygiene are followed, but the family members and colleagues were screened for the risk of infection and some were offered precautionary antibiotics.
thereTwo years, a researcher who worked in the same area in the Cummings Life Science Center, geneticist Malcolm Casadaban, a co-principal investigator with Schneewind, died after being infected with a weakened strain of Yersinia pestis bacterium that was not thought to infect healthy adults. According to a report in the Centers for Disease Control Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report Prevention Casadaban may have become ill because he had hemochromatosis, or iron overload in the body. The Y. pestis strain had been weakened by making it less able to acquire iron, and excess iron in the body of Casadaban would have to have become more virulent, the MMWR report.
The report said Casadaban, who was known to use gloves inconsistently, may have been infected by skin exposure, perhaps the same route of exposure that the researcher infected B. cereus . The university said the Public Health Service of Chicago visited the campus and reviewed the lab safety procedures.
Neither case concerned a pathogen of a selection on the CDC list of potential agents in a biological attack. (Although Y. Pestis is on the list, the Casadaban strain studied was excluded.) But Schneewind also heads the Regional Center of the Great Lakes of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research, a consortium funded by the National Institute of allergy and infectious diseases (NIAID) to study some agents and natural threats. The center is part of his work at a large laboratory biosafety level 3 on the campus of the Argonne National Laboratory, one of a dozen such regional biocontainment laboratories, built in part with funding from NIAID after the anthrax attacks of 01.
Schneewind did not respond to e-mail this morning seeking comment.
Update September 13: Today Science Insider discussed the incident with Conrad Gilliam, University of Chicago dean for research and higher education in the division of biological sciences. Gilliam said the group was studying Olaf Schneewind B. cereus in a BSL-2 facility, using BSL-3 practices, such as a biological safety cabinet, as a precaution. The infected researcher did not work on B. cereus but may have touched her gloved hand of a drop of inoculant overthrown by another researcher, then hit a sore on her skin that was not properly covered, Gilliam said. The university is to have B. cereus samples sequenced to verify that the strain she was infected with was acquired in the laboratory.
The university is concerned that the B. cereus accident following the 09 plague infection, Gilliam said. "The fact that there have been two serious incidents [involving] individuals, we take very seriously. It does not matter if it was a random or not random. "As a precaution during the decontamination and the university investigation, Schneewind moves on work B. cereus BSL-2 and some other pathogens that his team had investigated using BSL-3 practices Cummings building outside the campus Ricketts BSL-3 facility.
once the motion and laboratory decontamination Cummings is complete, "We will seriously sit down for recycling, retooling, rethinking" biosecurity procedures, Gilliam said. He added that he answers questions about the incident that Schneewind can concentrate on moving four researchers and their projects off-site laboratory.
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