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]