Resend since this appears to have been lost in the ether. Even a copy I
sent myself to make sure messages were transiting properly was lost
during that temporary problem. Anyway, this IS ferret related but has
to give some non-ferret info, too, to get the points across. I will
copy myself to see if this mail works.

Just to be clear:

Ferrets do NOT get the coronavirus MERS-CoV which is Middle Eastern
Respiratory Syndrome, and is from a specific type of coronavirus.

MERS-CoV has been found in humans and camels, with its greatest rate
in the subSaharan portion of Africa where the numbers of camels are
higher, the strains and rates of MERS-CoV are higher in camel
populations, and health care far worse so infection could be missed
more easily. Outside the Middle East an infection has been spotted in
bats which may be the precursor infection that mutated first into a
form camels could get (now over decades several related strains) and a
later mutation made human hosts possible. Indications are that MERS in
camels first entered the Middle East in camels imported for slaughter.
(There was also one report of finding the coronavirus in a goat kidney
but nothing further on that regard so perhaps they first used just a
general coronavirus test and instead spotted a coronavirus of goats,
a problem similar to the one casual transmission report that happened
with ferrets years ago in a SARS study. I don't know.)

MERS is NOT at all the same infection as MRSA which is
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Ferrets can be infected in a laboratory setting with a DIFFERENT
zoonotic coronavirus that humans get, SARS. That coronavirus is also
found in multiple members of Carnivora in the wild, and has been caught
in home settings by some dogs and by a number of cats. Early in the
studies of SARS one study reported casual ferret to ferret transmission
of SARS in a lab setting but that looks to be a situation in which the
researchers used a general coronavirus test and the ferrets actually
had ECE. Several early SARS researchers did not realize how many
different types of coronaviruses spread around in mammals there are,
nor that most of those types are very species-specific. > > ECE is the
common ferret type of coronavirus. There is also a mutant of ECE which
presents like cat dry FIP does, but genetically is NOT FIP, but instead
genetic studies indicate that it is an ECE MUTANT which acts like FIP
so is sometimes referred to as FIP-like. You can read about them in >
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu

There is currently work elsewhere which is funded by an absolutely
wonderful list member to try to create a coronavirus vaccine for the
ferret coronaviruses. Dr. Bob Wagner is working on that.

Also, there is work ongoing elsewhere to find out how to treat
coronaviruses. This began because of SARS and MERS-CoV but the aims
have included finding ways of eventually treating coronaviruses in
general, so perhaps may help with ferret coronaviruses at some point,
too. Currently, the only approach to coronaviruses is to treat symptoms
to minimize damage.

The system version on ferret corona virus is rare.

The older and more common ferret coronavirus, ECE, the enteric strain
colloquially known as the Greenies and similar terms, is wide-spread,
may be the root cause of some cases of IBD due to the profuse damage
it can cause in the small intestine, and the damage caused may be a
trigger for some later GI malignancies. Young ferrets with it can be
asymptomatic.

Anyone who has been in the ferret community long enough will recall
when ECE first began being widely reported, the high death toll it
took before vets figured out better how to manage it, and that it
first spread through ferret shows.

Doctor Bruce Williams, then at the now defunct but highly respected
Armed Forces Institute of Pathology which went away due to severe
damage from funding removal for Walter Reed during the Bush
administration, was the researcher who first identified the responsible
organism. Remember that discovery took not only very specialized
equipment but also a willingness to think way outside the box from what
was known at that time. Even today coronaviruses are understudied,
which is why we lack treatments. Imagine how it was then, to think of a
coronavirus and to recognize it as the causative organism decades ago.
That finding was confirmed at Michigan State University.

Dr. Matti Kiupel, of MSU, who also created the Ferret Health
Advancement Group there (which can always use donors, PLEASE) is one
of the most primary researchers who has been involved in gaining added
information on ferret coronaviruses.

Some researchers into MERS CoV have been using information from how ECE
behaves in ferrets like routes of transmission (and, yes, MERS CoV did
show up in camel fecal swabs), silent hosts, and viral shedding for as
long as eight months after symptoms stop to give them directions for
investigation. The last two aspects have not yet had completed studies.
Knowing so much about a different coronavirus (ECE) in a different
species (ferrets) may help solve some human health mysteries with
MERS-CoV and with SARS. This is similar to when the discovery of the
bacterial cause of ulcers in ferrets, Helicobacter mustelae, in work
done at MIT Comparative Med, led to the discovery of a different ulcer
causing genus Helicobacter species, pylori, in humans.

[Posted in FML 8160]