I don't actually have a tegu, because I generally think a lizard is a retarded choice among squamates when you could have a nice colubrid, but for one reason or another I started reading your forum lately for the blue tegu debate (I do like taxonomy) and found a post that interested me a few days ago - one about tegus dying from Sporothrix schenkii. I don't remember the whole post, but have you had actual confirmed cases of tegus dying from sporotrichosis? Have they been clinically diagnosed? If so, how? What were their symptoms? Sporotrichosis as described in vet med does not present as it does in human medicine. I am curious because there's no report of sporotrichosis in a captive reptile, and there's one report of a localised outbreak among some pygmy rattlers and garters, but that was confined to an area and mixed with some other dimorphic fungi and a Geotrichum, which only has been shown to affect severely screwed-up reptiles as a minor dermatomycosis and so I think something else was going on in that one area to allow a mini-epidemic among the snakes. In any case, only two snakes out of the study had sporotrichosis involved in their disease. So can anyone fill me in with anything more than you can (rarely) catch sporotrichosis from sphagnum moss?
Alex
Exams haven't totally melted my brain (yet) I'm just curious where this all came from - i.e. is there actually a basis for fearing that sporotrichosis has a predilection for teiids? It's an uncommon disease, although there are some that are definately more common (i.e. the ubiquitous Aspergillus) and the level to which any infected tegus were examined would help determine if it was Sporothrix or a more common opportunistic invader as a result of severe compromise or something else entirely. It's such a rare event in reptiles I would like to know more. You'd think if Sporothrix was so easy to catch from damp Sphagnum, there would be a lot more unhappy household horticulturists. Much like ringworm, a lot of mammalian pets are quite happily carrying Microsporum around and not infecting their owners.