Reptile & Amphibian Forums

she is currently in with 2 other snakes, i am planning on moving her out asap even though both of them most likely have it too. does anyone have any comments or suggestions that might help me, i know that it's an uncurable disease, but still, the doctor told me to make her as comfortable as possible.

~Candace

Candace- I am so sorry to hear you or anyone for that matter is dealing with this. You have my sympathy!

I had a scare with Crypto with one of my snakes that I'd had for about a year before it started showing symptoms (I'd even kept it in quarrentine for 3 months before moving it into my rack system). It was awful thinking that I might need to euthanize all of my snakes and basically nuke thousands of dollars of equipment since it's extremely difficult to completely get rid of the oocysts and you as the keeper are the best candidate for spreading the infection during cage cleaning. Here's a link in the Health forum to the discussion I got into about the possibly infected snake forums.kingsnake.com/viewarch.php?id=343392,347961&key=2004 But if you do a search for Cryptosporidium on the forums you'll find it's been discussed many times. My snake exhibited some of the symptoms (hard lump in the midsection) and the vet ran multiple tests on the snake up to the final necropsy and thankfully, no crypto was found. I continue to watch the one snake that was definitely exposed, though she showed no symptoms and has tested negative twice. It's really a terrible disease. I wish you the best of luck with this and hope that your snakes do not suffer with the illness.

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Lora

what is CRYPTO?? i have never heard of this and i am starting to get into snakes, so i want to learn all this stuff from someone more reliable than my wife's boss.......??????????????????

....short for Cryptosporidium, a coccidian protozoan (one-celled organism) that causes cryptosporidiosis, a disease of the stomach lining...causing hypertrophy, or thickening of the stomach wall, and dysfunction of stomach physiology, namely to inhibit proper digestion...it is phyla-specific, ie mammal crypto doesn't affect reptiles and vv...it is bad ju-ju to get!!!

sjm

...Acid-Fast (silver) staining of biopsy material (ie. stomach wall), a procedure similar to diagnosing Mycobacterium infections...shedding of oocysts can be intermittant so diagnosis by fecal exam is at best unreliable, particularly without acid-fast staining...

...incubation period (interval between inoculation and onset of symptoms) can be a year or more so a standard 90-120 day quarantine would NOT be enough to protect animals exposed to infected specimen...

...disinfection of rubbermaid tubs/aquariums can be done with straight undiluted Chlorox or Ammonia...prefer exposure of surfaces for 10-15 minutes...put on latex gloves first (pharmacy: First-Aid section)...discard anything that can't be chemically sterilized...

...Spiramycin (an 'orphan' drug not commercially available but stocked by the CDC [Center for Disease Control] has shown anti-Crypto activity...pretty much forget about obtaining some but you never know...

...Crypto is quite rare in the BP community so that's ONE good thing...

Hope this helps...good luck...

Scott J. Michaels DVM
Serpent City

You can order spiramycin from a well stocked chemical company
www.sigma.com 1 gram is $45. Don't have any idea on the dosing and this is not approved for drug usage, but if you were desperate to find it, here is an option. they also sell it in 1 mg/ml solutions.