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I was wondering if a vet can check for IBD through bloodwork?? I saw this verification in an ad, so i was wanting to get some opinions please....thanx Jason
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Some vets over here in germany have developed an IBD test.
It works, we´ve tried it many times.
If we buy a new snake we put it in our quarantaine room for 6 months, a few days after we bought it we make the first IBD-blood-test,than after 3 or 5 months the second one.
If there are inclusion bodys in the blood the snake is surely infected. If the vet find no inclusion bodys after the second test the snake should be clean. We have also proved the test with a biopsie and it always proved out to be save, means if there are inclusion bodys in the blood, they are also in the liver and other organs.IBD is a serios problem in boa breeding and should have more attention in the boa community. Some vets believe that when a boa is infected as a baby it can live 5 or more years with the desise without any symptoms, if it gets infected as adult they live not longer than two years with it. Also the "star gaising symptom" is a very seldom thing most of the infected boas die with respiratory or digesting system desises.

Greetings from Germany

SIEGI

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www.albinoboas.com

? That star gazing is not a part of IBD or that you yourself have witness very few stargazing episodes of snake doing as with IBD ? I would have to disagree on this as in my experience with IBD as well as the body twisting syndrome that I have witness with infected snakes with IBD. While may be of a pseudo type of IBD or IBD itself, it seems that boas are the number one species for IBD then the ball pythons. BUT wait.........there seems to be a colubrid and venomous snakes form of IBD now. But like I said > IBD or pseudo ? The snakes go through the same syndroms and the same chance of spreading. This is of course with the scenrio of bad or poor or non-thinking of husbandry practice ( spreading ).
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I may be old , cantankerous, crabby, and cynical, but......

I'd like to contact these vets and find out more about this "blood test".

I don't claim to be an IBD expert or anything, or even have firsthand knowledge, but from what I've heard, the testing isn't too accurate.

When I had heard about the testing, it was related to me by comparing it to testing for feline leukemia-
If an animal comes up positive, it has IBD. However, if it comes up negative, it may, or may not have IBD. Coming up negative doesn't necessarily prove that it doesn't have it.

That said, I haven't heard anything new about the testing for more than a year. They may have solved that problem by now. But I know that when it first came out, I talked to friends and a vet about it, and the general conclusion is that it was an ineffective test.

Sure, it would tell you your animal is dieing. But then, when it says it won't die, it might still die, and thus, a negative on the test could introduce IBD to the rest of your collection. The people I had talked to about it said they would use it if a specific animal appeared to have IBD, just to prove that it IS IBD, and not something less serious(such as a resp. infection indicated by stargazing).