Opmv

[Reptilian]

Originally Posted by glacey

They'd be more than aware of it - especially after the IBD outbreak at Armadale Rep Centre a few years ago

Armadale Reptile Centre??? REALLY??? how do ya know about that? was it well known or all hush hush? and how bad was it?

and yeah im aware of the authorites burying there heads in the sand so to speak...all authorities from all areas do it to make it look like its nothin to worry bout...and in the case that these diseases ARE in WA, why cant the ****ers get rid of the importation ban...as far as im aware its only on pythons atm (so adrian coleman told me)...also can other herps apart from pythons get them?

[hugsta]

Apart from snakes, the only lizard species it has been found in is the tegus from overseas. So at this stage, any lizards out here are safe.

[hazzard]

Originally Posted by hugsta

LOL, I find I use 10 times as much now, compared to repticlean that I used to use.

I know what you mean! My wife thinks it's funny, she comments on what a changed man I am in relation to cleaning. I fill up my old rept-clean bottle and empty it weekly and keep remembering the cost difference. The dilution rate is fantastic and the snakes don't mind it at all.

[glacey]

Originally Posted by Reptilian

Armadale Reptile Centre??? REALLY??? how do ya know about that? was it well known or all hush hush? and how bad was it?

It was prior to licensing and was quite well known at the time - from memory it was suspected to have come from an eastern states python that they were housing for someone. They lost a lot of animals through it.

WA would be crazy to let in eastern states animals when so many of the keepers here are inexperienced and have no idea about hygiene, quarantining etc. Im continually amazed how many people keep multiple animals in the same enclosure etc

[adbacus]

Originally Posted by hugsta

F10 is an anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-sporal and anti-viral. There is not much it won't kill. For your real nasty viruses like OPMV, parvovirus and bird flu etc etc. you need to dilute to 1:125 F10 to water and allow 30 min contact time for it to be effective. mixing it any stronger will not make any difference, it still needs 1/2hr contact time. You don't need to rinse out your enclosure either when finished. just replace your animals.

Make no mistake hugsta, i agree with you. It's really great stuff and is the dux of the disinfectant world for our herps. That is, if you can afford it and especially if you have a lot herps. I am offerring alternatives to little johnie 10 year old, who only has pocket money to spare and has only one or two pythons he keeps.

The big crux with industrial disinfectants as well is compliancy. If not correctly fololowed to manufacturers directions to the letter, they tend to be ineffective. And what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. That goes especially well with bugs and other pathogenic organisms - kinda like MRSA or Golden Staph infections you get in hospitals. We now have only one Antibiotic that works on it and it is vancomycin and it is only a matter of time before that becomes useless.

When I do use F10, I still aim to wipe down the enclosure with a clean damp cloth. Why I say this is that F10 is cytotoxic - damages cells at a cellular level. And experience with other similar chemicals like viraclens - used in hospitals and you are told several years don the track that it eventually affects your DNA, you tend to be kinda careful.

In either case this is JMO

P.s. Check this link out which has a study on different disinfectants

http://www.deh.gov.au/biodiversity/t...infectants.pdf

You'll see on this one F10 doesn't affect mycoplasma - hich is a cuase of Respiratory Infections in man and beast. And yes I know it's aimed at our avian counterparts

[adbacus]

I forgot add this as well, which is the generic Materiel Safety Data Sheet for F10.

http://www.healthandhygiene.net/prod...p?ContentId=68

[Reptilian]

yeah i was gonna say that if something so powerful enough to get rid of stuff like ompv, then id wanna be rinsing the enclosure well...something that can kill bacteria's like that could easily kill our herps (i would think anyways), but i do realise that it may say that ya dont have to rinse on the bottle or whatever...

Yeah, im just sayin that i personally would be vary careful usuing it, its obviously quite powerful...DARN 900 SEC RULE ARGHH

[hazzard]

ARP have been using for cleaning and fogging for ages now and have had no noticable ill affects.

[sengir]

What is ARP and what is fogging?????

[Tatelina]

I was going to question whether using strong products such as F10 have a chance of allowing the viruses to get stonger and mutate or what not to be able to withstand our chemicals and F10...? Thanks for those llinks adbacus.

[adbacus]

Originally Posted by sengir

What is ARP and what is fogging?????

ARP = Australian Reptile Park (correct me if I'm wrong)

fogging = a machine is used (a fogger) to turn liquids into a mist or fog which can help create a fine over material or surfaces based on what the material is for. What I've normally seen used for fogging is Peregin or Permethrin to drive away mites and mosquitos. Generally people wear full protective quipment when fogging as the chemical used may be non toic in small doses, but as it becomesa fog, it becomes a vapour/respiratory hazard.

[IsK67]

Originally Posted by adbacus

As for tests, a test is being devloped apparently using PCR - polymerase chain reaction. It uses a machine to detect and define the illness by finding key DNA sequences. It's already idely used for people - They use it to test for the for common STDs, the Clap, Gono and Chlamydia. These are only some examples. What needs to be done is to determine the key DNA strand that defines the illnesses as IBD and OPMV.

Who is doing this development. Is there anything that can be done to help?

IsK

[nightowl]

The person doing the research is Tim Hyndman. Here is a copy of a post by Tim from another forum (hope Tim and ARF don't mind! The more people know about all this the better)

Hello everyone, my name is Tim Hyndman and I am the vet from WA researching OPMV in Australian Snakes. I'm sorry that so many people are having so many problems with this insidious virus. It is truly devastating. I have used the username Switzerland deliberately as I will not be judgemental to anyone affected by the disease - no matter what they have done.

What we are doing here at Murdoch is trying to develop an OPMV test. This is for a PhD which typically take a minimum of three years. We hope to develop a test that can accurately detect a snake that is infected or has been infected with OPMV. We are hoping to accomplish this in two ways. The first is to do the "DNA test" (others have mentioned) for the virus itself. What this means is we take a sample from the snake and try and find the genetic code in the sample that is unique to the virus we are looking for ie we find the virus's genetic code in the sample, then the virus must be in the snake. Unfortunately, the current stumbling block with this part of the project is working with the genetic material the virus is made of. It is made of RNA and not DNA. RNA is similar to DNA but different in ways beyond the scope of this short message. RNA is MUCH MUCH harder to work with than DNA. It very easily gets broken down and is thus harder to identify. We are currently trying to iron these problems out. Once we have extracted the RNA from the snake sample it must then be manipulated into a form that the test, we intend to use, can handle.

So the first part of the test is the "DNA test" (would be more accurately called an "RNA test") looking for the virus itself. This test will probably prove quite expensive (and no, I will not guess at how much the test may cost) and would be used for single snakes that are suspected of being infected. The second part of the test is a different test that is looking for antibodies that have been created against the OPMV the snake has. When you get infected by a virus your body mounts an immune response against that virus by firing lots of antibodies at the virus. These antibodies are very specifically designed against the particular virus, in our case OPMV. The test works by looking for these specific antibodies. So if we find a huge amount of these "OPMV antibodies" then the snake had or has the virus. Unfortunately, this test cannot easily distinguish between a snake that has the virus versus a snake that had the virus. The test can be modified to try and differentiate the two but once again that goes beyond the scope of this short message. This would be something you would discuss with your herp vet. This part of the test would be a lot cheaper and would be used for testing an entire collection. It would be foreseeable that animals could be tested by both tests to give a more accurate result ie either test validating the other.

Both of these tests have been done before to some extent. The second one (the antibody test) is available commercially in the US and the UK. The difficulty lies in us obtaining the export permit for the sample and what is sometimes even harder, the import permit that the US and UK often needs to get to receive our samples. The first test (looking for the virus itself), as far as I am aware, has been done in research circles only and is not available anywhere commercially. It is for the reason that these tests have already been done to some extent that I am confident we will be able to develop a test for OPMV in Australia.

So that is what we are trying to do at Murdoch at the moment. It must also be remembered that there are lots and lots of different aspects to the research just to get you to the point of where you can start developing the tests. So please be patient and hopefully we will be able to come up with something sometime (no I will not guess when that might be).

As for the donations mentioned on this forum. It is very kind that you are thinking of the greater cause but unfortunately we are probably not in a position (right now anyway) where we could take animals. So keeping animals in quarantine or euthanasing them and getting high quality samples out of them are perhaps the best alternatives right now. I would recommend the first option because as someone else on this forum accurately put it, it may turn out that some of your animals are confirmed to NOT have the disease. However, if euthanasia seems like the only humane option then please have your informed herp vet contact me about a good sampling procedure.

The other big issue which seems to be raised on these forums regularly is that about transmissibility. There is only one scientific paper (to the best of my knowledge) that has looked into the transmission of OPMV. In this paper, a number of captive-bred adult Rattlesnakes were infected with OPMV by injecting a pure form of one of the strains of the virus into the snakes' windpipes. The snakes then showed signs of OPMV in their lungs 4-22 days later. Please do not assume that it takes 4-22 days to get OPMV as different strains of the virus would act differently as would different ways of receiving the virus. In this case a massive dose of a very pure form of the virus was injected directly into the airways. In conclusion this area is poorly understood and strict isolation of animals is the only way to be sure.

The final issue I want to raise is about quarantine. To the best of my knowledge, there is no information out there about how long an animal can be isolation not showing signs of illness before they can be considered free of the disease. Someone on this forum stated that who knows it may be five years before the virus shows itself in the snake. We simply do not know. The recommendations of quarantine times that have been made by some veterinarians in the literature are all determined based on their own personal observations. Basically, the recommended time is the longer the better.

My final words are please be patient. I truly believe with quarantine, openness and testing we can tackle this virus head on.

Cheers, Tim.

IMO, the best way to control OPMV is with strict quarantine. I guess it could be possible for the virus to mutate into a more resilient strain after continuous use of strong disinfectants but if we quarantine animals properly we could be rid of the disease eventually .

[IsK67]

Thanks for the info.

IsK

[ShaneBlack]

You will never eradicate it. I personally believe it has always been in Australian, in the wild and in captivity. You ask any old snakey and they'll tell you about wild caught captives dying suddenly with classic OPMV symptons 20,30,40 years ago. I believe it is a naturally occuring virus found in wild populations. Maybe importations brought in a few different strains, but i still believe it was here in one form or another from day dot. That's just my opinion.