LUBBOCK (USA), Jan 16: A Texas Tech University professor was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of giving false information to authorities about 35 vials possibly containing the bacteria that causes plague which were reported missing at the university, police said.

Dr Thomas Butler, a prominent member of the university’s infectious diseases division, was arrested for allegedly giving false information to a federal agent. Butler may have destroyed the vials that were reported missing, Lubbock police said.

The FBI said all the missing vials had been accounted for and the incident posed no danger to the public.

“We have accounted for all of those missing vials and determined that there is no danger to public safety whatsoever,” Guadalupe Gonzalez, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Dallas office, told a news conference in Lubbock.

Gonzalez said an investigation was launched on Tuesday when a doctor at the university reported the vials missing.

Law enforcement officials and staff at the university, 530kms west of Dallas, stressed that the bacteria believed to be in the vials could not be used as a weapon of mass destruction.

The vials were kept in a secure area and were used by researchers to test modern antibiotics on the bacteria that causes the plague, university officials said.

The White House was briefed on the incident, said spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is usually passed to people from rodents via fleas. It caused huge epidemics in the Middle Ages — notably the black death that wiped out up to a third of the population in Europe and also hit Asia.

It can take on three forms — bubonic plague, which caused the black swellings or buboes that gave the black death its name; pneumonic plague, which is far deadlier and caused when the bacteria are inhaled; and septicemic plague, which is a rare blood infection.

Plague is considered a possible bioterrorist agent because it is so easy to prepare and use as a weapon. It is easily treated with antibiotics, however, if it is diagnosed properly.

The World Health Organization reports 1,000 to 3,000 cases of plague globally every year. In the United States, plague is reported in between 10 and 15 people every year, killing a small percentage.

The last U.S. urban plague epidemic was in Los Angeles in 1924 and 1925, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Instant test: Scientists announced on Thursday they had devised an instant test for detecting the plague, providing a powerful weapon in the fight against bioterrorism and for combating the disease in poor countries where it remains a peril.

The dipstick test can tell in less than 15 minutes whether someone carries the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis, the researchers, from France and Madagascar, report in the British medical weekly The Lancet.

“Our RDT (rapid detection test) is a specific, sensitive and reliable test that can easily be done by health workers at the patient’s bedside, for the rapid diagnosis of pneumonic and bubonic plague,” they say.

“This test will be of key importance for the control of plague in endemic countries... Very early diagnosis of plague would also be essential in cases of bioterrorism.”

The plague bug, transmitted to humans via fleas that live on rats, is popularly thought to have been consigned to the history books thanks to antibiotics.

In fact, it still claims between 3,000-4,000 lives a year in poor countries where overcrowding, bad housing and sanitation are rife.

Plague, along with anthrax, is also touted as the likeliest germ to interest bioterrorists.

If transmitted in tiny droplets that are then inhaled, the bacillus causes highly contagious pneumonic plague, which is then easily spread by coughing and sneezing. This form of plague is fatal unless antibiotics are administered within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms, and so time is vital.

The test devised by a team led by Suzanne Chanteau of Madagascar’s Pasteur Institute uses monoclonal antibodies — the frontline troops in the body’s immune system that charge out into the blood system to tackle an invader, identifying it from shapes on its structure that are called antigens.

In this case, the antibodies, which are attached to gold particles sprayed onto a polyester strip, respond to the F1 antigen which is specific to Y. pestis.

Like an over-the-counter pregnancy test, the strips change colour if they are exposed to the targeted agent — in this case, two pink lines appear if the result is positive, but a single line for a negative one.

The strips were then tested on sputum, tissue biopsies, blood and urine, taken from nearly 700 people in Madagascar who were suspected to have the plague.

Patients were tested in the field at 26 pilot sites by medical personnel.—Reuters / AFP