I have some questions about proliferative bowel disease in ferrets that I
hope someone (vet or ferret guru) can answer:
 
1.  How prevalent is this disease?  In the literature I have only been able
to find one reference to this disease in a pet ferret.  I know that ferrets
in biomedical research programs have been shown to have this disease, also,
but how large of a problem is this?  Is this a common disease of ferrets
that would be seen regularly in veterinary practise?
 
2.  How is diagnosis obtained?  I know that the only definitive diagnosis is
to do a biopsy of affected colon and look for intracellular comma shaped
organisms in the apical cytoplasm of the intestinal cells.  Are there other
new tests for this disease (e.g. serological) or does the diagnosis rest on
biopsy/histopath?  How practical/difficult is a colon biopsy in a ferret?
In other words, if a ferret presents to a vet with clinical signs of
protracted diarrhea, weight loss, prolapsed rectum, etc. what is done to
determine that it is indeed PBD?
 
3.  I know that recently the intracellular organism was identified as a
Desulfovibrio species, but I was wondering if anyone knows if attempts to
culture the organism and inoculate it into naive ferrets have been
successful in reproducing PBD?
 
Thank you for any help that you can give me.  I have read everything
published about this disease in ferrets, but still can't seem to find
answers to these questions.
 
               Kimberly
 
If you could please send answers to [log in to unmask] I would appreciate
it.  I'm not able to read the FML right now.
 
[Moderator's note: Would appreciate responses to non-trivial questions
of general interest go to the list too.  Kimberly  (or whomever) can be
included as a CC: or something.  BIG]
[Posted in FML issue 1372]