Some time ago, there was a big discussion on the ADVList about when you
could test a kit for ADV and expect an accurate test result. At that
time, Tara Palaski posted in message #2501 that she had spoken to Roger
Bradley at United, and he had advised that kits from parents that were
tested and negative could be tested just about any age and you could
expect an accurate result. However, if the parents hadn't been tested,
or if one or both was ADV+, then he felt that the CEP test would not
provide reliable results on kits under 4 months of age.
As Mary posted in the FML on Thursday, Dr. Stephon has said the ELISA
test should not be used on kits until they reach 9 to 12 weeks of age.
Here in the States, kits frequently are available for sale in pet
stores as young as 6 weeks. Testing them would not be accurate, unless
the parents had been tested before the breeding, which not all of the
farms do.
What PETsMART is doing in regards to ADV testing is commendable.
I am not familiar with Fifths disease, so I can't comment on it. Canine
Parvo is a parvovirus, and so are all the ADV strains. But, I do
remember Dr. Stevenson saying at the Symposium in Las Vegas that while
Canine Parvo and ADV were both parvoviruses, they do not resemble each
other in the way they affect the body. There is also a Feline Parvovirus.
Your question got me looking into parvoviruses, though, and I found 2 or
3 interesting websites that discuss them. These are very technical, and
beyond my comprehension on a lot of the details, but apparently in the
virus world, parvoviruses are relatively new to science. It doesn't mean
they haven't been out there, just they were not known until recently.
This link has some very technical information on parvoviruses, but also
has parts I can understand.
http://www.tulane.edu/~dmsander/WWW/335/Parvoviruses.html
Another pretty technical discussion:
http://www.virology.net/Big_Virology/BVDNAparvo.html
Here is a link to a site that discusses how parvoviruses may be used in
the future to fight some cancers.
http://www.bio-pro.de/en/region/rhein/magazin/00741/
While not all mustalid species have been tested for ADV, I think the
researchers pretty much expect that any of them could be susceptible to
it. And, while it is thought of as a mink disease, there is no real
proof that mink were the first to have it - just they were the first
animal where it was identified.
I know that both wild and ranch mink can get ADV. There have been
reports of polecats in New Zealand having it, so it is likely that
polecats in Europe have it also. I seem to remember that skunks were
recently reclassified, so that they are no longer considered to be
mustalids, but I might be mistaken on that. They are certainly closely
related to mink and ferrets, so I am not surprised they can get ADV.
Raccoons, which are not mustalids, or even closely related, can also get
ADV. It is unknown whether or not if affects their health, but it has
been proved that they can carry and transmit the disease. In 1996, Dr.
Marshall Bloom had an article in the Journal of Virology where he
discussed the role raccoons may play in infecting ranch mink with ADV.
On an interesting note, in St. Louis one evening, Dr. Murray, Dr.
Kawasaki, Travis Livieri (the Black Footed Ferret guy) and I were
talking and the subject of ADV came up. Travis said as far as he knew,
they didn't have an ADV problem in the BFF population. Let's hope that
is true, and that it stays that way.
--
Danee
International Ferret Congress Health Issues Coordinator
http://ferretcongress.org
ADV - If your ferret hasn't been tested, you don't know!
For more information visit: http://www.ferretadv.com
You can help fight ADV! Visit:
http://help4adv.terrabox.com/
[Posted in FML issue 4911]
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