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Health Update: Pseudotuberculosis

© Karen Yang

Last week I went through the agony of losing two young (10-month-old) rattie guys. The first part of the story is in last week's Rattie Ramblings. Monte's cagemate and brother, Coffee, died 3 days later with the same symptoms. He hung on, was drinking some, and for a while we thought he would make it, but he lost the fight, too. I believe that the organism that took both of them was Pseudotuberculosis. Note: I'm not a vet, nor did I have an autopsy/culture done on either boy, so this is purely conjecture. However, this is a disease to think about when your rats are suffering from something similar to myco, but which moves terribly quickly, comes with loss of appetite and spreads within 2-4 days to other rats housed together or who have had contact with each other.

A good description of pseudotuberculosis, a.k.a. corynebacteriosis, along with some suggestions for its treatment are located at http://netvet.wustl.edu/species/rats/rat... . Here's a rundown of what we've learned so far. From what I understand, outbreaks of this disease are caused by a latent bacteria, Corynebacterium kutcheri. It is similar to myco in that the disease can remain hidden for long periods of time before it flares up. Outbreaks are usually brought on by environmental stresses. In our case it was probably due to a slightly overheated rat room caused by summertime brownouts (thanks a bunch, electric co.). Other things that make a rat more susceptible to flare-ups are other underlying diseases (their mom is a carrier of myco, so they probably had that as well), malnutrition, cortisone injections and exposure to radiation.

The biggest problem with pseudotuberculosis flare-ups is that you seem to have only 2-4 days to diagnose and treat the disease. Both boys only lived 3 days after we recognized that they were sick. It looked similar enough to myco, so we didn't have enough time to try other treatments with Monte, and the fact that Coffee wouldn't eat at all or drink very much made it very difficult to get anything into him. Both boys had difficulty breathing, sneezing with occasional bloody noses and difficulty walking, which seemed to be caused by swollen joints. Monte's coat became very rough, while Coffee stayed his sleek self until the end. Most notably, both boys, who always had terrific appetites, refused to eat. Coffee ate one yogurt drop the first day he was ill, half a yogurt drop the next day and refused anything and everything most of the last day. A few minutes before he died, he grabbed a cucumber slice and some cereal and tried to cram them into his mouth, but was too weak. Both refused baby foods, cream cheese, mashed banana and other easy-to-eat things. Monte refused to drink anything, while Coffee continued to drink, but not much.