Biological weapons are considered as mass destruction and terror weapons. Terrorism including bioterrorism is the major threat in the future conflicts for our nations. The aim of bioterrorism is more related to the potential disorganisation of the society than to the lethal effects of the agents used. The dramatic consequences cannot be discarded, especially if contagious agents such viral are used. The preparation of specific defence measures is a major challenge for our countries.
The knowledge acquired from the struggle against natural infectious diseases and recent events are essential to improve behaviours to face the biological weapon threats. The defence attitude is based on the anticipation of the threat, the management of the victims, and the restoration of the operational capabilities. This global defence attitude implies six important functions: (i) alert, (ii) detection and diagnosis, (iii) availability of pharmaceutical countermeasures such as vaccine, sera and anti-infectious medicine and products, (iv) medical management of victims, (v) training and information, (vi) research and development.
Passive and active immunoprevention and immuntherapy belong to the approaches discussed in the context of bioterrorism countermeasures. Further researches might be focused on these topics. 相似文献
Organic acids have been widely used as feed additives to replace antibiotics in livestock feeds. Data on the use of phenyllactic acid (PLA) are lacking. The effects of PLA on production performance, egg quality parameters, and blood characteristics in laying hens were studied in a 35-d experiment. A total of 240 ISA Brown 36-wk-old layers were divided into the following 4 treatments: 1) control (basal diet), 2) control + 0.1% PLA, 3) control + 0.2% PLA, and 4) control + 0.3% PLA. Although supplementing the diet with PLA did not affect ADFI and FE, it linearly improved egg production rate, eggshell breaking strength, and Haugh units. Egg weight, eggshell thickness, and egg yolk color were not significantly altered by supplementing the diet with PLA. White blood cell, red blood cell, total protein, and albumin concentrations were higher in the control + 0.1% PLA and control treatment groups (P < 0.05), whereas the groups fed the control + 0.2% PLA and control + 0.3% PLA diets had greater (P < 0.05) lymphocyte concentrations. In conclusion, PLA may exert some positive effects to the immune system and egg production over the short term. It may be beneficial to supplement the diets of laying hens with PLA in the absence of antibiotics. This experiment involved a small experimental sample and a short time, so the beneficial effects of PLA should be studied further in commercial farms over the long term. 相似文献