Mouthrot

Neuro · Member Joined: Aug 03, 2005 Posts: 35

This has proven to be a problem for my tegus, what about yours, what treatment have you follow, what have been the causes of this illness, ive given my tegus antibiotics but the infection doesnt seem to dissapear, it comes back after a while, and many vet in here have many versions of the root of the problem.

1.Staphilococcus aureus
2.Simple local infection caused by injury from a mice bite or claw, or simple dirt.
3.The weather
4.Lack of vitamin

Im aiming for the first 2, but some say that the staphilococcus thing its normal, others that is a dangerous thing, the simple local infection its hard to say for me, because i keeop my tegus together, they share water bowels, food and bed, but...

Do you have the same problem? what have you done? what your vet told you? do you own some serious material about the mouthrot in tegus?
_________________
2.0.0 Colombian Black Tegu

VARNYARD · Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2005 1:03 am Post subject:

The fastest way for reptiles to get mouth rot is dirty water and unclean cages. I will probably get some feedback on this, but regular listerine with q-tips works great to treat mouth rot combined with antibiotics. Listerine was first made to use in the medical field, before it became a mouth wash!
It will clean and kill the germs and bacteria thats causes the mouth rot. I have been using it for years on reptiles with great results. Treat him three times a week! It should be cleared up within two weeks. Make sure to clean you water bowl as many times as needed during the day, to keep it fresh. This should solve the problem.
_________________
www.tegu.com and www.Varnyard-herps-inc.com

alex · Valued Member Joined: Aug 03, 2005 Posts: 106

I completely fail to see what weather has to do with stomatitis... the same with dirt. Animals eat dirt in the wild with their food. They generally survive. Unless by "dirt" you mean something like shredded bark that might have pointy edges, or your tegu is exceptionally retarded when it comes to eating, I'd doubt it was it.
I suspect you have a husbandry problem. If it's a repeated problem, and antibiotics clear it up and then it recurs, it's probably something you're doing. Probably not intentionally, but in this type of situation it's usually captive care, unless the animal has a build-in susceptibility. It's hard to say what the role of S. aureus is. In some cases, it's a primary pathogen. In others, it just invades where there's already damage. It is normal flora in humans - i.e. you might be the one breathing it out all over your tegus. Honestly, put them in clean hospital cages you can bleach the crap out of every day, clear up the stomatitis, and while you're doing that throw out everything the tegus had in their cage, disinfect it and let it sit for a few days, then only put in new bedding, dishes, etc just as they're being reintroduced. If you do the weird raw meat diet a lot of tegu people seem to like I'd stop while you're dealing with this... for the short term, feed a low calorie canned cat food as you at least know it's been cooked to kill bacteria before canning and won't reintroduce disease to their mouths. You need to nip this NOW because Staphs are horrible for acquiring resistance with repeated courses of antibiotics. Culture your tegus to make sure you're treating with a drug they're sensitive to.
If you're curious enough, culture your own nasal cavity and see if you have the same staph that's causing the problem. I don't think they've ever gotten rid of carrier humans, so I don't know how you'd deal with that other than wearing a decent mask when handling your animals. It's a big problem with surgeons
Dilute chlorhexidine is a better scrub, just make sure they don't swallow it. The clean Q tip is good to gently debride the tissue. And there are topical creams I've used in snakes, ask your vet for some.

tupinambis · Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2005 1:45 pm Post subject:

To further compound what Alex has said, you REALLY want to get this mouth rot taken care of because of where it might lead. I've seen a case where repeated/prolonged infection with mouth rot has led to the tegu suffering enough damage in the oral cavity that eventually the tongue wound up being paralysed. With a paralysed tongue, the animal wound up being even more prone to further infections and other complications.

Neuro · Member Joined: Aug 03, 2005 Posts: 35

Well, the quarentine for animals and humans and the surgeons suits are out of case you know, they are pets XD.

This starts being a problem when the winter comes, i was asking about some kind of vitamin or a supplement to help, i saw at their diet and i didnt saw anything that gives them vitamin C for example, im not sure about this but with us the vitamin C works well to help the respiratory system.

I do the mouth washes with purified water and Isodine (oral iodine for humans) with a dilution of 1%, and after the cleanning i put some Brosin, that has tetraciclin, vitamin A, and another agents, and they work well, the thing is that after some time it comes back.

No one in this city can tell me if the staphilococcus is normal oral fauna or the agent causing the mouthrot, im pointing to the second one, because like you said we humans also are carriers of this, but we dont show the mouth injuries at least that our inmune system isnt working well.

I will clean and dissinfect their stuff and clear the water more often for a start, hey alex do you know about a book of this kind of issues? normal oral flora for tegus? also normal intestinal flora would help because no one in this city knows

By the way, my tegus are not in the death door or something, they just have this little injuries in their mouth, Minos to be specific, since forever, and i dont want this to make a bigger problem.
_________________
2.0.0 Colombian Black Tegu

alex · Valued Member Joined: Aug 03, 2005 Posts: 106

You need to actually be able to do minor quarantine and stuff for your animals. Get plastic tubs or something easy to clean out, and get them out of that cage while you treat it and them. You can quite easily wear a mask, you can get them at a pharmacy, while dealing with them if you are in fact the shedder of it. I can and have quarantined numerous animals in my own home for years now for various reasons.

Oral iodine isn't particularly recommended as a disinfectant on mucus membranes. Use something that's actually really effective, like diluted chlorhexidine (usually if it's a 5% solution, dilute it 1:20). Where did you get your cream from? Like I said, if it's recurring make sure your antibiotic was actually effective. Why did you pick tetracycline? If it was based on a culture and sensitivity of the affected area, it likely needs to be done for longer. If it's OTC, it's obviously ineffective therapy. This is something you actually need to spend more money on if the tetracycline cream isn't working - do a repeat culture and see what's up. If you're unwilling to culture yourself, then know that this could be recurrent BECAUSE OF YOU and nothing you do to your tegus could prevent it.

If their diet is totally lacking in vitamin C then scurvy could be an underlying problem (what are you feeding that there's no C?) you could supplement, but you have to be aware of how much you're giving. It is possible to OD on Vit. C and get toxic effects. On the whole, you should already be feeding a balanced diet that doesn't require special supplementation in the winter....

There is no research on what's normal for tegus... there seems to be this expectation on this board that somewhere there's a vast store of scientific info on them. There's not... you can't make money off of them, so there's little money in just going around figuring out what's normal. Staph aureus isn't normal on any animal's oral mucosa. It IS normal on lots of species skin, including our own. It often hides in nasal cavities, which communicate with the mouth. I don't know if your tegus have it, I don't know if all tegus have it, I don't know if you have it, but something is providing a strain of S. aureus that is either pathogenic enough to do this itself or is allowing it to invade the damaged tissue. You can't tell that from a simple C&S, you need to actually get more work done on these animals.

Also, remember reptiles are slower to get sick and slower to heal. It's unreasonable to expect this to clear up in a week or two of treatment. You need to put a fair amount of money and time into doing this rapidly and effectively.

Neuro · Member Joined: Aug 03, 2005 Posts: 35

Is not about the money, it about no one telling me one single version, with you the staphiloccocus thing has another history, the culture thing ive done that a hundred times, but without knowing the oral flora of the animal it works for little more than nothing.

If its normal on my skin or nose we are both damned to have that thing forever because i have them on my bedroom and i usually breath in there, but the thing is that one of them has this injuries in the mouth and the other doesnt, i made a culture of both and the both have the Stph. A., so the problem maybe something else, i feed them with ground turkey, chicken, eggs and beef mostly of the time and give them jump start as a complement that has everything but vitamin C.

Ive been told, and ive read about the feeding habits of colombian black tegus and 30% of the ppl says that they eat fruit, but mine dont even look at them, not even if they are too hungry, so i feed them with meat mostly, and the cream is a helping agent not a therapy, he had this problem like 1 month ago and get lots of antibiotics, so i dont want to give him it again in some time.

The cream has tetracyclin because of the last culture, that says that one of the bacteria they have and maybe the root of the problem is sensitive to this, the culture showed kliebsiella and a little of staphilococcus, but no one of the vets in here knows if thats normal for reptiles for sure.

Where can i get this chlorhexidine? and it is safe to use on them?
_________________
2.0.0 Colombian Black Tegu

alex · Valued Member Joined: Aug 03, 2005 Posts: 106

Chlorhexidine used to commonly be sold as a pink scrub called Hibitane, but that's no longer made and it's now sold as scanhexidine (which caused huge wheals on a good chunk of our surgery patients so we don't use it anymore) or something called something along the lines of vet hand scrub, which is green. Ask at a pharmacy, it might be behind the counter but they should be able to point you to a chlorhexidine gluconate solution.

It might be worthwhile to try supplementing with vit. C if you're really not getting any in them diet wise. Humans are recommended to get 2000 mg, based on an average of 70 kg body weight, so try supplementing at 29mg/kg (look at a vitamin C tablet for the amount per tab, then weigh the whole tab, grind it up and then weigh out however much powder gives you the correct dosage for your tegu's weight (1 lb = 0.454 kgs, btw) and mix it in. I don't see why offering high vit. C fruits is bad... papaya, canteloupe, strawberries are usually more palatable than oranges to animals, or you can put in some finely chopped veggies like broccoli, kale, etc... basically good sources of vit. C. Also, switching to a low-cal wet catfood would provide a lot of Vit. C. Liquid Vit. C supplements are bad, 'cause Vit. C breaks down quite quickly. If you can correct the poor wound healing and minor immunosuppression that a vit. C deficiency would cause, that might help your tegu. Colin would actually probably have a much better idea of what you could get it to eat, 'cause he actually has tegus and therefore has to deal with feeding them. I keep obligate carnivores, which are so much easier to feed, and turtles, which I generally have to try to stop eating things like wood, plastic, etc...

What was the Klebsiella? What was it sensitive to? That's an enterobacter, which means it's related to Salmonella and E.coli, and like them it means your tegu is somehow getting shit in its mouth. It may or may not be pathogenic (like the Staph

) but it is often sensitive to things like gentamycin or topicals like neomycin, so it might be worth making sure your AB gets it as well.

tupinambis · Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 12:56 am Post subject:

Chlorhexidine is also sold as Nolvasan. You should be able to find it at any farm/veterinary supply store. If not, you can put in an order through www.beanfarm.com

drfish · Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 11:55 am Post subject:

Anyone care to translate any of that into English

alex · Valued Member Joined: Aug 03, 2005 Posts: 106

If you really don't understand a part of it, I can try to explain. Or Colin can if he gets to it first 'cause I have a lot of school. It might be just as well, since the owner above just PM'd my boyfriend to see if he'd have anything different to say, which is a bit of a piss-off for me. Husbandry problems are a pin in the ass to deal with even without the owner not really wanting to do what needs to be done or not understanding why there's no simple cure.

drfish · Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 8:24 am Post subject:

What is this

Oreo · Member Joined: Sep 27, 2005 Posts: 10

I am having the same problem with the Stomatitis, however my tegu's problem is getting better. See the post "Antibiotics for gum problem". Alex provided some good info there. I am giving my tegu injections of Amikacin right now and the problem is clearing quite quickly. By the way, thanks again for the info Alex.

tupinambis · Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 11:54 am Post subject:

Staph aureus (a particular species of pathogen/bacteria) isn't normal on any animal's (is not a common tourist found on/in any healthy animal) oral mucosa (mucosal tissue of the mouth - ie. the gums, inner cheeks, etc.)

Oreo · Member Joined: Sep 27, 2005 Posts: 10

Staph aureus (a particular species of pathogen/bacteria) isn't normal on any animal's (is not a common tourist found on/in any healthy animal) oral mucosa (mucosal tissue of the mouth - ie. the gums, inner cheeks, etc.)

I agree with Alex on this tupinambis. I have personally cultured my nasopharynx in a Microbiology class and I am a carrier of S. aureus. I have no symptoms of the prescence of this bacteria, but there are people who "normally" have it.