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.
