Brooks City-Base entomologists demonstrate pioneering techniques

by Rudy Purificato
311th Human Systems Wing

11/3/2005 - BROOKS CITY-BASE, Texas (AFPN) -- They don't "kill bugs dead" as the advertising slogan suggests, but they're finding them a lot faster now before deadly microorganisms can cause havoc through disease outbreaks.

Air Force medical entomologists here have developed an innovative capability that could have a profound impact in safeguarding warfighters and civilian public health. 

This Air Force medical entomology team is a mobile group of scientific investigators who are pioneering more effective field collection methods for detecting deadly pathogens such as plague and anthrax.

"Air Force entomologists have been historically interested in insects and how they pose a risk to military personnel," said 1st Lt. Wes Walker, an Air Force Research Laboratory medical entomologist. However, until three years ago, Lieutenant Walker said, the Air Force did not have a rapid-response team for investigating disease outbreaks.

The potential for bioterrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks led former U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine medical entomologist Capt. Keith Blount to propose the creation of this specialized mobile team. The team, configured depending upon the mission, has included a combination of medical entomologists, public health officers, public health technicians and molecular biologists.

It is designed to support military and civilian public health efforts to limit the spread of naturally occurring animal and insect-born disease, as well as provide another military capability in mitigating the potential health effects posed by bioterrorism. 

The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease at Fort Detrick, Md. has identified potential bioweapons. Among the most deadly diseases on the list are plague, the flea-infected rodent-borne "Black Death" that wiped out half the European population during the Middle Ages; the mosquito-borne yellow fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever; anthrax; and tularemia, the tick- and rodent-borne disease also called "rabbit or hunter fever."

Historically, the public health response to such outbreaks involved bioengineers sampling air, soil and water in concert with human vaccinations and infected animal quarantines. However, there exists no capability to counter secondary outbreaks in undomesticated animals such as rodents, raccoons and squirrels. 

"You can't find and treat every mouse. That's where this team comes in. We understand animal (and insect) biology and behavior," Lieutenant Walker said.

With a great idea and little else, Air Force medical entomologists here began to develop this rapid-response team in 2002. Trained in animal and insect behavior and how these creatures transmit disease to humans, these Air Force specialists took a giant leap forward in developing their new capability through collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

"We contacted Dr. Ken Gauge, a national plague expert who is at CDC-West in Fort Collins, Colo. We modeled our field lab after theirs," Lieutenant Walker said. Besides learning about the equipment CDC uses during disease surveillance operations, the Brooks team learned how the CDC responds to outbreaks. However, they wanted to improve upon CDC operational methods in field sample collection.

"They collect tissue samples, pack it in dry ice and ship it FedEx to their labs," Lieutenant Walker said, explaining that this method is not real-time analysis at infected areas.

The team has since achieved a milestone in the real-time field detection of animal-borne disease when it used the Ruggedized Advance Pathogen Identification Device for the first time to detect plague in environmental samples.

The team developed their skills further thanks to Jim Harrison, an Army entomologist and hantavirus expert who works at the Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine-West at Fort Lewis, Wash. Mr. Harrison's techniques for detecting and collecting samples of hantavirus, the potentially fatal disease spread by mice feces, helped team members immensely.

During the past three years, the Air Force mobile entomology team has deployed to various locales to conduct disease surveillance surveys that have led to remediation countermeasures.

They've tested their capability in peacetime at stateside sites including areas around the Air Force Academy and at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., as well as internationally in El Salvador and Honduras. Their capability evolved to include wartime disease surveillance operations in Iraq.

As a consequence of their collaborative work with the Army, in-theater preventive measures were taken that contributed to fewer American servicemembers contracting potentially fatal diseases. 

(Courtesy of AFMC News Service)