boas and ibd

[Rakk101]

I have sent the following email from my university email account. I will post any information if I get a reply.

Dr. Jacobson,

Myself and many other snake lovers are interested in information on Inclusion Body Disease. Could you enlighten us on any published articles or literature that may better inform us on this disease?

Thanks for your time,
Paul Kelley

If he emails you back can you post it here, I am always up for reading as much as possible about issues like this.

Thanks

[ohyeahnow]

If you can figure out how to post PDF files stored on my computer I can. He sent them to my university email and they can only open in that account. I sent Skiploder the links, but because it is my account the links will not open. I emailed him the files after saving to my computer. If you have acess to journal data bases I can send you the journals names and article names Jacobson sent me and the ones he has listed on his web site. I will be on later today.

To: "Paul A Kelley/O/VCU" <kelleypa@vcu.edu>
From: "Elliott Jacobson" <JacobsonE@vetmed.ufl.edu>
Date: 10/23/2008 09:50PM
Subject: RE: Inclusion Body Disease

Attached is an article published in the December issue of Reptiles Magazine and a paper published in veterinary journal (a 2nd paper will follow in the next e-mail). I have a graduate student working on developing a diagnostic test for IBD. Unfortunately there is limited funding to do such work. For the most part, the reptile industry/breeders have done little to support studies to better understand and diagnose infectious diseases of reptiles that are being sold in the pet trade.

Sincerely,

Elliott Jacobson, DVM, PhD
Professor of Zoological Medicine

[dr del]

Hi,

You want to open the emails with the pdf's and then save the attatchments to somewhere on your computer.

Then you upload that file you saved to a website or file hosting site and then give people the links to that.

You could also forward the email to someone and they could do it for you.


dr del

[JimiSnakes]

Does he say how he would like the reptile industry to support research?

[Skiploder]

Does he say how he would like the reptile industry to support research?

I think it's outlined in the last paragraph of the Reptiles Magazine article he wrote.

I think the problem is that the industry has not really supported research. I mean, I've seen interviews with some of the larger boid breeders who have poo-poo'd the disease.

Not to beat a dead horse, but if comparisons are being made to IBD being the snake equivalent to HIV - what does that mean? If people were to diagnose HIV based on symptoms, only the people who came down with full blown AIDS would be studied. As we know, not everyone who has HIV immediately develops a full-blown case of AIDS - the latency period can be in excess of 20 years.

So if necropsies done on a boid species show that anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of animals that died of non-IBD causes tested positive for the retrovirus, the worst case scenario is that 1/3 of animals carry the virus but are in a latency period where while they are asymptomatic, they can potentially still infect other boids.

How many breeders to you know that are performing necropsies on their animal who die? It's not uncommon for a breeder to lose an animal with no apparent symptoms or warning. How many breeders are performing liver or tissue biopsies to randomly screen for the disease? How many are donating money to IBD research?

I think the answer in many cases is "not many". There may be some exceptions to the rule but I can provide links to the interview I referred to above.

[halfwaynowhere]

I'm dealing with a possible case of IBD, too. Still have a lot to learn. Its my sister's BCI.
How likely would it be to get a false negative on a live biopsy from a snake that is showing severe neurological signs? I'm worried that if we get the test done, it will be inconclusive. It might be better to euthanize him and have a full necropsy done. He's on his way out, as it is, and we really need to know.

[Skiploder]

I'm dealing with a possible case of IBD, too. Still have a lot to learn. Its my sister's BCI.
How likely would it be to get a false negative on a live biopsy from a snake that is showing severe neurological signs? I'm worried that if we get the test done, it will be inconclusive. It might be better to euthanize him and have a full necropsy done. He's on his way out, as it is, and we really need to know.

In terms of live biopsies - if you test the liver and get a negative; it can be two things. (1) The liver has no inclusion cells in it (but maybe the kidney or the pancreas do) or (2) the animal does not have IBD.

Snakes can have neurological problems from other sources: amoebic encephalitis, trauma due to chemical toxicity, bacterial toxins, "heat" stroke, etc.