{"id":11413,"date":"2026-02-11T12:34:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T18:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11413"},"modified":"2026-02-11T12:34:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T18:34:25","slug":"teenager-contracts-rare-welders-anthrax-marking-the-ninth-known-case-ever-reported","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/02\/11\/teenager-contracts-rare-welders-anthrax-marking-the-ninth-known-case-ever-reported\/","title":{"rendered":"Teenager contracts rare &#8216;welder&#8217;s anthrax,&#8217; marking the ninth known case ever reported"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/health\/viruses-infections-disease\/diagnostic-dilemma-teenager-contracts-rare-welders-anthrax-marking-the-ninth-known-case-ever-reported\">Live Science<\/a> A teenager training to be a welder contracted a rare and dangerous lung infection, prompting a combined state and federal investigation. <strong>The patient:&nbsp;<\/strong>An 18-year-old in Louisiana<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The symptoms:&nbsp;<\/strong>The teenager, who was training to be a welder, developed a cough and was hospitalized with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/pneumonia.html\"><u>pneumonia<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;and respiratory failure a week later. He was intubated at the hospital, meaning a tube was placed into his airway and attached to a machine to help him breathe.<a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The teen was six months into his welding apprenticeship, which involved working four hours per day, four days per week. He was otherwise healthy and reported being a nonsmoker with no history of excessive drinking. <strong>What happened next:&nbsp;<\/strong>The doctors ordered a blood test, which revealed an infection with a bacterium in a related group of microbes known as the&nbsp;<em>Bacillus cereus&nbsp;<\/em>group. At that point, the doctors did not know which specific bacterial species within that group had caused the infection. But most often,<em>&nbsp;B. cereus<\/em>&nbsp;group bacteria&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.uptodate.com\/contents\/bacillus-cereus-and-other-non-anthracis-bacillus-species\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"cause intestinal infections, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><u>cause intestinal infections<\/u><\/a>, like food poisoning, not lung infections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although very rare, the teen&#8217;s combination of symptoms, occupation and geographic location had&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2076-0817\/11\/4\/402\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"previously been documented, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><u>previously been documented<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;in cases involving<em>&nbsp;<\/em>welders in Louisiana and Texas. The knowledge of this rare phenomenon enabled the medical team to quickly identify the likely cause of his symptoms, they wrote in a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/mmwr\/volumes\/74\/wr\/mm7442a1.htm?s_cid=OS_mm7442a1_w\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"report of the case, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><u>report of the case<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Live Science A teenager training to be a welder contracted a rare and dangerous lung infection, prompting a combined state and federal investigation. The patient:&nbsp;An 18-year-old in Louisiana The symptoms:&nbsp;The teenager, who was training to be a welder, developed a cough and was hospitalized with&nbsp;pneumonia&nbsp;and respiratory failure a week later. He was intubated at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emerging-infectious-diseases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11414,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11413\/revisions\/11414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}