From:
"Nanci"
Date: 2009-07-23 22:44:10 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Confirmed case of FIP
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
We welcomed a pair of girls to our Shelter in late March. Phyllis is doing fine, but little Pam was only with us for a few weeks. She was fine for the first couple of days but then hit the deck and after a few weeks of continual wasting, we lost her.
Pathology has confirmed FIP. Thing is, I don't think the girls are under 18 months old; in fact, though guessing their age by looking at their teeth and behavior is certainly not very accurate sometimes, I'm quite certain that Phyllis is at least 3! Perhaps she and Pam were not the same age...anyway...
Thing that's the strangest for me to understand is that we really didn't have any signs in our Shelter population of ECE being afoot! So far as I understand it, FIP is a mutation of ECE. Pam was ailing so she stayed with other critters in our population (usually around 40) who are also slow from illness, age, etc. So if anyone was going to pick up anything from little Pam, her friends surely would have been the first!
So I'm puzzled and sad we lost her...and I need to learn more about this illness. Our pathologist will be presenting the case at an upcoming conference and I've asked her for the technical findings.
Nanci
Motor City Ferrets
www.motorcityferrets.org
[Telling the FIP-like coronavirus from FIP is NOT
something that the vast majority of labs can do.
There is some highly specialized equipment
needed to tell which coronavirus is found
in the tests that are usually done. This
testing is so specialized that the Michigan
State Ferret Health Group does it not only
for within the U.S. but has also checked
European specimens. That is how rare the
ability ANYWHERE is to be able to do the
more refined testing to tell the two apart.
The disease that looks like FIP in ferrets
is actually a mutation of ECE, but the
standard coronavirus tests can not tell
them apart, so the terms can get confused.
What ferrets get is a systemic ECE that
resembles FIP but is not FIP.
See:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18424841
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/FHL8987
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/FHL8974
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/FHL8714
and more
The contagion aspect is addressed in one of those
past posts and remains a question.
I am very sorry that you have encountered this
new coronavirus mutant. You vet will want to
contact the Ferret Health Group at MSU to run
specimens and to speak with the experts there
on this illness and share info back and forth.
--Moderator]
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