- The focus to date on West Nile Virus has been on birds,
horses and humans, but now dogs are added to the list. A local
veterinarian,
Dr. David Bryan of Bryan and Hight Veterinary Clinic, received results
this week that a blood sample of a dog he treated earlier in the month
had come back positive for the mosquito-borne West Nile Virus. The virus
is spread by migrating birds, which are in turn bitten by mosquitoes, and
those in turn transmit the virus to horses, humansóand now,
dogs.
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- Several vases of WNV in horses have been diagnosed in
the North Florida/South Georgia area since the virus ìheaded
southî
earlier this year, and a dead osprey collected by Charles Palmer of the
Decatur County Public Health Department in the Lake Douglas area tested
positive. But this is the first case of WNV in a dog.
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- Dr. Bryan said he had just attended a seminar on WNV
in Tifton where the Serology Department at the UGA diagnostic lab in Tifton
presented a list of eight clinical signs of WNV in horses. The dog he
treated
showed six of the eight. Dr. Bryan said the dog was an otherwise-healthy
two and one- half-year-old male Labrador whose owners live just across
Lake Seminole near Sneads, Fla. When he was brought in, the dog was
drooling,
appeared to feel bad, had facial tics in the muzzle- area muscles, and
his left ear was drawn up toward the top of his head. His vision appeared
to be impaired, his appetite was poor and his temperature was up. All in
all, Bryan said, he showed signs of a central nervous system
problem.
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- In-house lab work was reasonably unremarkable, so blood
samples were sent to Tifton for screening, including Eastern and Western
Equine Encephalitis and West Nile Virus. The encephalitis screenings were
negative, but the WNV was positive. Dr. Bryan said veterinarians had
thought
that dogs would not be affected by WNV.
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- Bryan had begun treating the dog with chlorophenocol,
an old broad-spectrum antibiotic which the doctor says he has used for
years when he felt he needed a ìbig shotgun.î He explained
that this medicine will cross the blood-brain barrier and might have some
anti-viral properties as well. The human version, chloromycetin, had been
off the market for some time. The great news is that the dog was well
enough
to go home in three or four days and reached full recovery about five days
after that.
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- Dr. Bryan said while there are WNV vaccines for horses,
there are none yet for dogs, and he has contacted a pharmaceutical company
which produces horse vaccine to see if a dog vaccine is forthcoming.
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