Bacterium infected 3 at BU biolab
Three Boston University researchers became ill last year after being exposed in a laboratory to a potentially lethal bacterium called tularemia, university and public health authorities said yesterday.
It was the first known instance of researchers in a Boston lab becoming infected with a biological agent they were studying, according to a city public health official. And it came at an awkward time for BU -- when it was seeking local and federal approval for a high-security lab to study the most feared infectious diseases in the world.
How the workers became infected remains unclear, although BU officials said that researchers had violated procedures intended to protect them from exposure. Two researchers became ill in May and a third in September, apparently after separate exposures. But their illnesses were not linked to tularemia until October.
BU reported the cases to city, state, and federal health authorities in November -- about the time public hearings on the high-security lab were being held. But neither the university nor the government agencies disclosed the cases to the public at the time, saying there was no risk to public health because tularemia is not transmitted from person to person.
Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who learned of the cases from BU and city public health officials, also decided against telling city residents.
"Right from the moment that he was made aware of the situation, the Public Health Commission assured him there was no public threat whatsoever, and he's made it clear that if there was any public threat whatsoever, the public would have been advised immediately," said Seth Gitell, the mayor's spokesman.
With Menino's enthusiastic backing, the city Zoning Commission gave its final approval to the high-security biolaboratory last week.
The lab still must be approved by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases -- which is considered likely because it's the same agency that in 2003 selected BU as one of two sites nationally for sophisticated new labs able to study anthrax, plague, and other deadly pathogens.
BU and public health officials discussed the cases publicly for the first time yesterday after media inquiries.
The president of the Conservation Law Foundation, which has opposed building the high-security lab in an urban neighborhood as dense as the South End, said last night that the accident highlights the risk of studying dangerous biological and chemical agents.
"The assurances that BU has given that it can maintain perfect control of these facilities are called into question," said Philip Warburg, leader of the environmental group. "We're also disturbed that this incident is only coming to light today."
Gitell said that because the Zoning Commission was concerned solely with land development issues, it was not necessary to inform commission members about the exposures of the BU researchers.
Gitell said there were also concerns that publicizing the incident could jeopardize ongoing investigations into the exposures by the city Public Health Commission and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Thomas J. Moore, acting provost of BU's medical campus, said the university did not believe that the cases of tularemia exposure were relevant to the ongoing debate over the development of the high-security facility, known as a Biosafety Level 4 lab. The researchers who became ill were working in a Biosafety Level 2 lab, which has far less stringent safety standards and is allowed to work only with less dangerous material.
"The security levels in a BSL-4 laboratory are so far beyond what you would see in a BSL-2 laboratory that this would never happen there," Moore said. "This has for sure heightened our awareness and attentiveness to safety issues in labs that operate at a lower level of security."
The first exposures happened last spring, with two researchers falling ill in late May. They complained of flu-like symptoms and one was hospitalized overnight. The third infected researcher fell ill in September and required hospitalization for several days, Moore said. All three recovered fully after receiving antibiotics.
University officials declined to identify the researchers or describe in greater detail their job duties, citing privacy concerns.
They worked in a lab that in 2003 received a five-year grant from the federal government to develop a vaccine against tularemia, an illness spread by insects and animals, including rabbits. Often called "rabbit fever," it is also viewed as a potential agent of bioterrorism. In 2000, an outbreak of tularemia on Martha's Vineyard ignited panic after a laborer died and about a dozen other people became infected.
The scientists at BU believed that they were working with a strain of the germ that had been altered specifically for vaccine research so as not to cause illness. But a highly infectious strain of tularemia was mixed with the harmless variety. The source of the contamination is being investigated by federal health officials.
The tularemia linked with the illnesses was supplied by a laboratory in Nebraska that federal authorities, citing security concerns, declined yesterday to identify.
Because the researchers assumed that they were working with a form of tularemia not known to cause illness, they did not immediately link their symptoms to their research.
It was after the third researcher became ill that faculty members began to suspect that something could be seriously wrong in the laboratory inside the university's Evans Biomedical Research building on Albany Street in the South End.
Subsequent DNA tests on the tularemia being studied in the BU lab showed that the bacteria identified as coming from Nebraska contained the harmless strain and a highly infectious type.
"The deck was stacked against [the researchers] because they were working with something they had no idea they were working with," Moore said.
But Moore acknowledged that researchers in the lab had violated policies requiring them to work with tularemia inside an enclosed box, called a hood, that sends air through sophisticated filters.
Instead, the tularemia samples were sometimes worked with in the open, in part because the enclosed research boxes were sometimes filled with material that should not have been kept there, Moore said.
Blood tests were performed on about 60 university researchers, and those tests showed that only the three workers who had become ill tested positive for tularemia. After the exposure was determined, BU in November shuttered the lab for decontamination. The part of the lab where the tularemia research was conducted remains closed.
Eleven researchers were placed on paid leave in November, to ensure the integrity of the investigation, and six remain off the job.
The investigation into how the exposure happened continues. Samples of tularemia were sent directly from the Nebraska lab for CDC analysis, and those tests showed no presence of the dangerous strain, deepening the mystery around the episode.
"At this time it seems to me there's no evidence conclusively to link the contamination to Boston or to Nebraska," said Jennifer Morcone, a CDC spokeswoman. "Certainly, everyone would like to determine the source of the contamination to make ceratin nothing like this could happen again."
Infectious disease specialists at other universities said that BU appeared to have acted properly by notifying health agencies. They also said that BU was not obligated to alert the public to the exposure of researchers.
"I don't know what the point would be of telling the public because there was no danger to the public," said Karl Klose, a professor of microbiology at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
As a result of the exposures, BU as well as the Boston Public Health Commission are moving to tighten oversight of research. To improve safety in the dozens of public and private research labs in Boston, the Public Health Commission intends by this spring to start a mandatory training program for lab workers, emphasizing the reporting of illnesses in researchers. The commission also plans to hire a lab safety inspector who will make unannounced visits to research sites to make certain they are following safety protocols, said John Auerbach, Public Health Commission executive director.
Alice Dembner and Beth Daley of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Stephen Smith can be reached at stsmith@globe.com. 