What kinds of illness does anthrax cause?
If you inhale it, you eventually may develop an infection that resembles pneumonia, causing fluid to build up in your lungs. Once you develop symptoms, this form of anthrax becomes untreatable. In the cutaneous form, you develop a sore or a blister on your skin, and that is the least deadly. What is the death rate? All types of anthrax can lead to death, but cutaneous anthrax is usually curable, and early treatment is important for all forms. The death rate for gastrointestinal anthrax is 25 percent to 75 percent, and for inhalational anthrax it’s 90 to 100 percent. How long does it take for symptoms to appear after exposure? It takes as little as two to six days, but it can be six weeks or even longer. What are the early and late symptoms? It depends on what type you get. If it’s cutaneous anthrax, usually it’s a sore or blister. If it’s gastrointestinal or inhaled anthrax, the early symptoms are flulike fever, cough, diarrhea. Later on, the inhaled anthrax develops into pneumonia, wh
