When Flagstaff Medical Center doctors recognized two patients’ symptoms as those of rabbit fever, they reached out to county and state health officials, who turned to NAU’s David Wagner for clarification.
Dave Wagner, Director of the Biodefense and Disease Ecology Center of PMI, received a grant of $933,609 from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to identify specific volatile metabolite profiles that are signatures for antimicrobial resistant/multidrug resistance in Yersinia pestis, which causes bubonic plague, and Francisella tularensis, which causes the often-lethal tularemia, also known as Rabbit Fever.
