The post in the FHL which asked about superbugs pretty much just asked
if ferrets who live in very sterile situations wind up at risk due to
having immune systems that naive. The person never suggested that the
ferrets should be exposed to possible disease carriers. Nor did she
slam any shelters or homes which use a different approach. BTW, she
does strictly quarantine newly arrived ferrets, and she has visitors
use a parvocide.

Want to learn more about risk factors for emerging diseases? This is a
good read:
<http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/about/directors/pdf/EmergingInfectionsLancetID.pdf>

If this is a new disease or a new mutant of ECE, then let's face facts,
until it is carried to Europe it simply isn't there... That happens in
reverse, too. The ECE mutant that looks like dry FIP in symptoms may
have first appeared in Europe given some reports. It's not just there
any longer, though. :-(  Luckily that one is very rare disease in its
current iteration. (Whew!)

The new disease does not "melt insides". It causes acute, extreme
diarrhea and resulting extreme dehydration. Luckily, it looks like
Tamiflu might work for it. There are two other drugs in that same class
of medications which prevent or reduce viral replication. I don't know
if the others might also work.

A later message from a friend of one individual with something that the
treating vet thought looked similar but had a different cause has since
written that the poultry involved was not raw but there is a chance
that it was accidently undercooked. E. coli was suspected according
to that FHL post. Now, if it was shiga toxin producing E. coli even
cooking won't work. Yes, that kills the bacterium but it does not
remove the toxin. If it was a non-shiga-toxin-producer then being
under-cooked would make a difference.

Right now it seems like emotions are running a bit high.

This is a time of year when they often do, and worrying about a
possible new illness is a stressful thing, so the effect is cumulative.

Never-the-less, it is best to not assume the worst, including about
what another person might mean. In hard times it simply pays to stick
together.


Sukie (not a vet)

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html

[Posted in FML 6195]