From:
Sukie Crandall
Date: 2003-11-11 19:02:53 UTC
Subject: Re: Tuberculosis
To: lisa@leedg.com, ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-Id: <A6EAE00E-1479-11D8-8C31-000A95CD182C@mac.com>
There are 12 posts on types of Mycobacterium in the Complete FHL
Archives which may help you.
http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org/browse.php?msg=SG5675
is from Dr. Bruce Williams and is about Mycobacterium avium
http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org/browse.php?msg=YG11774
is also from Dr. Williams who is veterinarian and a pathologist and
includes a section on the difference between the risks of contracting
it by diseased animals vs. healthy animals:
>Let me reiterate - M. avium is omnipresent in our environment, and
>you have to be immunosuppressed to be at risk. Your dogs won't get
>it, your cats won't get it, your ferrets won't get it, and assuming
>that you and your son are healthy, you won't get it.
>I don't think your vet is all that informed about mycobacterial
>infections - they are uncommon in most domestic animals, and M. avium
>really poses little threat. There are certainly exceptions to any
>case, but the odds are way in your favor.
http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org/browse.php?msg=YG11719 also by Dr. Williams
includes in part a similar section on how for healthy individuals it
does not pose a risk:
>Let me be blunt here - this is (relative) nonsense. Mycobacterium
>avium is the most ubiquitous of the mycobacteria in our environment,
>and all of us, human, dog, cat and ferret, come in contact with it
>many many times a day. It does not pose a contagion risk to any
>normal healthy individual, however, it may pose a small risk to
>infants, the aged, or immunosuppressed people such as post-transplant
>recipients or people with AIDS.
>It is a very difficult disease to treat, and carries a poor prognosis
>for those ferrets affected, but in the normal household, there is
>little chance of spread. There is often some unidentified mechanism
>for immunesuppression in affectd animals, and I have seen several
>outbreaks, but only in families of dogs which all have some genetic
>defect which affects the immune system.
>I get this question several times a year, and my answer is always the
>same - without family members who are immunosuppressed, there is a)
>no need to euthanize the animal, and b) no need for undue worry. If
>we were so worried about Mycobacterium avium - we'd never venture out
>of the house (or even out of bed) every day.
For consultation information in relation to Dr. Williams:
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
Furthermore, in U.S. vet texts you will find information. In _Biology
and Diseases of the Ferret_ Fox includes several pages: 343 - 347
Mycobacterium species (types of tuberculosis) are more common than many
think and comes in more varieties; our vet treated a pet goat for one
variant this last year.
In _Ferret, Rabbits, and Rodents Clinical Medicine and Surgery_ Hillyer
and Quesenberry include 2 paragraphs on page 32. In _Essentials of
Ferrets_ Purcell has two paragraphs on pages 128 and 129 on M. avium.
In ferrets the bovine version has not been seen among ferrets in the
U.S. since people stopped feeding raw ungulate meat or raw ungulate
offal with the infection and stopped feeding unpasteurized milk
according to the vet texts. (I do not know which ungulates do not get
this infection or which other non-ungulates do, but you will find the
information in some of the good sites out there if you search on
"zoonoses" in a search engine like google.com. You will note in the
Fox text on page 344 that M. avium infections can find one route of
infection through the feeding of raw poultry, and that it also points
out that agricultural efforts to stem Mycobacteria infections in
livestock have hugely reduced such infections in ferrets, but do
remember that Mycobacteria can still exist in wild animals and bird
feces (and hence also shoes sometimes) can be route to infection for an
immune suppressed animal or human, as you will find in the texts.
I hope this helps.