What is it?
Brucellosis- AKA Brucella Canis or B. Canis is a highly contagious incurable disease caused by the bacterium Brucella Canis. Meaning, this is a bacterial infection that cannot be treated. It is the ONLY bloodborne pathogen recognized by OSHA in veterinary medicine.
What does it do?
Infection in male dogs can cause lead to testicular atrophy and infertility. Female dogs can abort in late gestation and have vaginal discharge. It can also result in litters that include dead, infected, and apparently healthy puppies. Dogs can also develop an infection within their spine, inflammation of the eyes, or non-specific signs such as lethargy, decreased appetite, and enlarged lymph nodes. Some dogs have no obvious clinical signs and cause infection for other dogs.
Why do we care?
Brucellosis is highly contagious, and resistant to antibiotics, making it untreatable. Brucella Canis can be present in saliva, urine, feces, and reproductive fluids and can live for several months in the right environment, as it can survive high humidity, low temperatures, without sunlight, dry surfaces, and can even survive the semen freezing process. With this, dust, dirt, water, clothing, and any other objects the infected dog may have been in contact with pose a risk of transmission. There is no cure for canine brucellosis, and dogs are considered infected for life, and there is also no vaccine available.
Brucella is zoonotic- which means you can get it too! Once in the human, the disease may never be eliminated – it hangs out in the bone marrow of the unfortunate recipient for the rest of their lives, causing symptoms that include fever, aches, and symptoms similar to that of influenza. It is of particular concern in the very young, the very old, patients who are immunocompromised. Women who are pregnant can lose a pregnancy – and when you consider most caretakers of dogs in shelters, humane societies, rescue organizations, dog breeding kennels are young females of child-bearing age, this is especially worrisome.
This is a reportable disease, and treatment is left up to your county officials- many will require that the entire kennel, and any dogs exposed, be euthanized.
The Society for Theriogenology recommends that all breeding dogs be tested based upon risk factors and frequency of breeding and found to be negative prior to breeding. This means both male and female dogs be tested prior to each breeding, and prior to semen freezing, all male dogs should be tested and found to be negative.
In addition, the Society for Theriogenology recommends that all dogs and dog semen imported into the United States are negative for B. canis.
There have been an increasing number of outbreaks throughout the United States, particularly in commercial breeding operations. As infected dogs move out of these facilities and co-mingle with other dogs as breeding stock and rescued dogs, brucellosis may easily spread into other breeding facilities and client’s homes. Dogs may be exposed by routes other than venereal transmission, such as through casual contact with urine and genital discharges at dog events and breeders who rescue dogs from breeding facilities. Veterinarians and breeders must be less complacent about testing for this important and devastating disease.
For these reasons, we, and many other facilities, are now requiring brucellosis testing once a year for any studs being frozen with us.