Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I believed that my snake had crypto for the longest time. The reason for that was b/c it had a lump that i thought was a thickening of the stomach wall. CLASSIC SIGN OF CRYPTO. I finally had it autopsied and it WASN'T the stomach wall but the heart. The heart was greatly enlarged and the cavity was filled with blood. My questions is, do enlarged hearts have anything to do with crypto? I spoke to a vet and he said it doesn't but i want to make sure. ANY info would be great, thx

ron

No. Crypto would not cause an enlarged heart. Cryptosporidium is a coccidian bacteria that, in snakes tends to accumulate in the stomach, and in lizards accumulates in the intestines. One of the classic symptoms, as you mentioned, in snakes is a hard swelling of the stomach. The hardened swelling of the stomach is always preceded first by regurgitation of every meal, then finally a refusal to eat at all, dehydration and then the swelling of the stomach and finally death. Crypto is fortunately somewhat rare still. It can be difficult to quickly and accurately diagnose unless you are looking for it. It's not something that you would pick up on a normal fecal float or direct smear when looking for other "bugs". It is very small and takes special staining techniques (acid-fast) to find, and very high magnification for a light-microscope (1,000x to 1,600x).