Ball Python Nidovirus - New Virus

[George1994]

I was just reading the original post from that thread that bcr229 posted, and the effects of this disease sound awful! This next paragraph is copied over from that post, and it is extremely graphic to read at your own discretion.

---- Gore Warning ----

Generally, the first sign is typical of any RI. Clear bubbling mucous, wheezing, drooling, lack of appetite. Then the mucous turns bright green, almost like the fluid inside a glowstick that has burned out, and intensifies, often showing smears all over the sides of the tub and the substrate. The wheezing gets worse, and the infection does not respond to ANY antibiotics whatsoever, nor any antivirals, even Interferon. Raising the heat does nothing. Then blood starts appearing within the mucous, and the snake's tissues swell around the upper body. The wheezing gets worse, and the snake begins to forcefully expel air/fluid from its lungs (almost like a cough, but snakes can't cough). The death usually comes at night when you are asleep, although I unfortunately had to witness two dying in front of me one evening. You go to check them in the morning, and you find them bloated, cloudy looking as if in shed, upside down and twisted into horrific shapes due to due to severe convulsions and the snake fighting to breathe, covered in blood that was expelled from the lungs, mouth, and nostrils. It is an excrutiating death for these animals to go through, and an image I will never get out of my head.

---- Gore Over ----

This sounds so horrible I couldn't imagine seeing something like that! I am glad that progress is being made and these types of things are being researched! Hopefully some sort of medicine can be invented to help combat this virus!

- Edit -

http://derisilab.ucsf.edu/pdfs/mBio-2014-Stenglein-.pdf

I believe this may be a scientific paper published on the subject, interesting read.