Brucella canis

Related to the crippling "Brucella abortus", "Brucella canis" affects dogsthrough feeding, close contact, bodily fluids, and contaminated products. It causes brucellosis in dogs.

Researchers have discovered the potential that "Brucella canis" might be a zoonotic organism. Signs of this disease are different in both genders of dogs; females who have Brucella Canis face an abortion of their pre-devolped fetus. Males face the chance of infertility; the reason is that they develop an antibody against the sperm. This may be followed by inflammation of the testes which will generally settle down a little while after. Symptoms do not only include testicular inflammation, infertility in males, and abortion in females. Another symptom is the infection of the spinal plates or vertebrae, which is called diskospondylitis.

Treatment for "B. canis" is very hard to find; but when you do find some, it is often very expensive. The combination of minocycline and streptomycin is "thought" to be useful, but it is often unaffordable. Tetracyline can be a less expensive substitute for minocycline, but it also lowers the effect of the treatment. However, dogs with Brucella canis should be handed with full body protection because the "Brucella" family is a zoonotic organism and has a higher chance of mutating rather than bacteria because they are eukaryotic. Contamination will result in potential mutation of the organism and may harm the victim.

External links

* [http://patric.vbi.vt.edu/genome/overview.php?genomeId=3958 "Brucella canis" str. ATCC23365] (from [http://patric.vbi.vt.edu/ PATRIC] the PathoSystems Resource Integration Center, a [http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/ NIAID] Bioinformatics Resource Center)