Ophidian Paramyxovirus information

[kirrachaos]

From my knowledge the symptoms are related to the onset of other viruses or bacteria attacking the body as the immune system has dropped due to OPMV. For example a lung infection/neumonia can set in. This is a sign that could appear with a lot of viruses. Star Gazing and belly up are all signs which appear in several viruses and at the moment there is no easy way of testing the animals to see if it is OPMV until the animal dies or unless you want/can pay thousands of dollars to let a vet cut your live animals open to take a biopsy of some organs and that is still no garantee. I have been reccomended before to take microscope slides of the animals bacteria when they are healthy. This will then store what the animals bacteria is in the animals stomach when they are presumably helathy and then if you critter falls sick at a later date you can then refer back to that slide to see what bacteria are doing with in the animals stomach which can give you some sort of indication on whats going on. Talk to your vet about this and the correct way to do it. it helps!

[extreme_pets]

great read glad that someone else has also tried to tell people how important knowing your animals and quarratining all new animals before adding to you collections really is thanks for that great info

[rockman]

Originally Posted by Chimera

I think greater benefit will come out of information about possible transmission mediums. Unfortunately there is a great deal of irrational fear about OPMV at the moment. It wouldn't surprise me if the thought would cross a breeders mind "if I offer up information about the OPMV deaths I have had, will I be blacklisted in peoples minds".

I am not saying all breeders are thinking this, but no matter how well you can account for your biosecurity procedures and how well you've limited the impact people will still think "wasn't he the guy who had OPMV in his collection".

IMO (in my opinion) a simpler starting point would be to continue the education campaign within the reptile keeper community to remove the irrational fear and replace it with intelligent responsibilty. If people like olivehydra and nightowl continue to offer information about their keeping practices and OPMV outbreaks we can draw correlations between cases and identify potential transmission mediums.

Funny , when you read things like this , you would hope that people would do the right thing .
What about a breeder ( still a member on here ) , had OPMV for awhile now ( maybe 1-2 years ) and still selling snakes from his collection ? . Makes it a bit hard to trust anyone eh ? .
I think we will hearing about OPMV in the future alot more .
Good to try and keep this thread going for the newbies .
Cheers

[Paliadon]

Thanks for the info. It is great. Always good to keep abreast of these issues.