Dear Sharon:
 
>Well, the diarrhea is a thing of the past, Tally is well, Toby is down to
>one subq fluid challenge a day.  Lucy is a little more compromised and it
>would appear that the virus has stressed her insulinoma enough that after
>one year of pred every other day she may need to go to daily, due to
>transient hind leg weakness last night.  She is at the vet getting glucose
>checks, but looks perkier than after her fluid last night.  The villan
>causing the diarrhea?  The vet says H Pylori, which could have been
>brought in several ways: Peter our new baby, even though he has YET to
>be introduced to the others, or one of us humans.  Echo, of course, had a
>few days of diarrhea last week and then was fine; Peter has not had any.
 
The worst cases are seen in older ferrets with concurrent disease, which
appears to be the case with Lucy.
 
Has ECE been considered in the differential diagnosis for this outbreak of
diarrhea?  The clinical history is fairly classic - new baby in the house,
everyone comes down with diarrhea, except the baby (who likely brought it
in).  Even though Peter hasn't met them face to face, this virus is easily
transmitted within a household on shoes, unwashed hands, clothes, etc.
 
H.  pylori is a Helicobacter which affects humans and does not seem to be
very pathogenic for ferrets - I consulted on several studies in which
people tried to establish infections and it never really worked.  H.
mustelae is the native Helicobacter for ferrets, and while it does cause
some disease, largely in older ferrets with established long-term
infections, it does not result in an outbreak of diarrhea such as this one.
 
If Peter came from a pet store, and you saw a combination of greenish
mucousy stools, birdseed stools, etc from the others, I would strongly
suspect that what you are seeing is a fairly classic case of ECE.
 
With kindest regards,
Bruce Williams, DVM
[Posted in FML issue 3293]