Long story short. I was given a 2 year old ATB. I did the quatantine thing for 90 days. Everything seemed fine, he was alert, striking at me, eating, etc. I put him in my herp room with everything else. He seemed to be going into a bad shed (this is months later) so I soaked him tonight and he couldn't turn himself over when I had put him in the water. He evedntually would after 10-15 seconds or so and the 3rd time I flipped him he stayed that way. I never noticed any signs of anything until now. I know I'm a little paranoid but I'm nervous about my whole collection, I have 8 boids. Any advice? I got him out of the room along with his enclosure and everything I could think of that touched him. Is IBD air borne? Am I in trouble here?
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Who's had a run in with IBD? I might need help!!!
Bryan139
Jul 19, 2005 09:41 PM
Replies (1)
joeysgreen
Jul 21, 2005 04:12 AM
While we know much more about other reptile diseases, they are all rather elusive to grasp.
IBD, or Inclusion Body Disease is caused by an unknown pathogen, guessed to be a retrovirus. The method of transmission is unknown, but close contact (ie, same cage and/or utensils from cage to cage) or snake mites increase risk of transmission.
There are currently two methods of determining if your snake has IBD.
1)The best method is a post-mortem. Multiple tissues can be sampled and searched for inclusions. Optimal tissue includes the brain and pancreas.
2)Liver biopsies may be lucky enough to find inclusions in an infected snake as most cases have found this tissue to be diagnostic. Pancreatic biopsies require a laparotomy, and complications are quite likely.
The key in diagnosing IBD is that not all infected snakes show symptoms, or present inclusion bodies in tissues (or tissues that have been checked). Therefore a positive snake can be identified, but no snake can be "cleared" as negative.
If you would like a more detailed paper on IBD, you can email me.
To suite your specific needs though, I don't think IBD is high on the differential list. Your snake does sound very sick and a visit to a herp vet needs to happen asap.
www.arav.com or visit herpvetconnection, or contact local vet clinics for a referal if you need to find one.
Good luck with your tree boa
Ian
