Posted by:
she_geek
at Sat Jul 21 14:11:57 2007 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by she_geek ]
"Some animals can "allegedly" be carriers, without showing any symptoms. Well, if they carry this disease, "WHY DON'T THEY GET SICK". Could it be that some boas are immune? If a carrier of the disease is immune, couldn't they work on finding out why and find a cure?"
The problem may be that IBD is probably caused by a retrovirus, the unpredictable bastards of the microbe world. I am not a biologist, so if there are any on here, please feel free to correct me, but, my understanding of a retrovirus is that it hijacks the cells of a host animal to convert RNA to DNA, which means that the organism doesn't "proofread" the DNA in the typical manner, resulting in very frequent mutation. Viruses mutate frequently anyway - that's why the flu vaccine has to be updated every year - but retroviruses put other viruses to shame, which is why researchers can't find an HIV vaccine.
The result is that, if IBD is in fact retroviral, there's probably countless wildly different strains of it out there, and the more it gets passed, the more it's going to change. If Boa A passes IBD to Boa B, Boa B may have a radically different strain of IBD than Boa A. Boa A might have a strain that appears asymptomatic for years and never show signs, while Boa B might develop terribly symptoms within a few months and die. Or it might be the other way around.
Because of this, it's unlikely we'll ever find a cure or vaccine for IBD. Our best bet is to push for a reliable test (from what I last heard, you could only confirm diagnosis with a chunk of your boa's liver - yikes) and cull our collections accordingly. But considering herps aren't a big priority in the veterinary research world, I guess I'm not holding my breath...
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0.1 Boa constrictor imperator
0.3 Ball pythons
1.1 Crested Geckos
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RE: IBD Discussion - she_geek, Sat Jul 21 14:11:57 2007