Streptococcus zooepidemicus

[glinda]

Anybody had any experience with this infection?

I bought a mare 5 weeks ago, she came over from Ireland. She is fully vaccinated, passed a full vetting and my vet was happy with her when she arrived.

For the first 4 and 1/2 weeks she has been great then at end of last week she coughed a few times, vet checked her saturday and gave the all clear. By sunday she had a horrible really snotty nasal discharge and still coughing. No fever or any other symptoms though.

Vet came again monday and we panicked that it was flu or strangles but all the tests for those are negative but highly positive for Streptococcus zooepidemicus.
She is on antibiotics and the nasal discharge is a lot better though she is still coughing.

At the moment all my other horses seem fine

I have no idea how she got the infection, since she arrived she or any of the others haven't left the yard and we have not had any visiting horses. Its just my horses on the yard.

Anybody had any dealings with this infection, how long did it last, how was recovery etc etc….. your comments would be appreciated

 

[Janovich]

From memory I'm pretty sure this is what is the 'baby brother' of strangles glinda.

When my boy was a 4 year old (many moons ago) this infection hit the yard I was on at the time and we had to treat it like full blown strangles, protocol wise. All the youngsters got it barr my lad (who was fortunately in another block to the other youngsters at the time). I took his temp every day at the same time to keep an eye on any differences with that and we weren't allowed anywhere near the other block, obviously. Anyone who had a youngster in the infected block and also another horse in the other block had to make arrangements for one of us in the 'healthy' block to oversee looking after his/her horse. This we did with pleasure as it helped them to just deal with the patient and not be in danger of infecting the healthy block. Easier said than done I can tell ya and it took a hell of a lot of discipline and understanding on both sides to keep up with the disinfecting/cleanliness side of things.

We were more than happy to look after anyone's 'other horses' for them if they did have one in the healthy block as it helped both parties out.

We had tyre disinfectant troughs into and out of the gates to the livery yard too....and everyone went home and stripped off and threw their horse gear in the wash straight away. No horses went anywhere, we were on 'yard lockdown' until some 7 weeks later, we had the all clear.

My boy I must add was the only youngster on the yard not to get the infection and I'm sure the fact that we were all so strict with ourselves from a 'infection protocol' point of view, helped immensely. That and I had him on a tincture from crossgates that I always liked to think helped his own immune system fight off anything untoward.

We all had absolutely no clue as to how the infection got on the yard,...a lot of us competed fairly regularly so we always guessed that it must have been brought in from a 'show day out'..which would be quite viable really I suppose.

Hope my little story helps glinda

 

[LittleBlackMule]

A few years ago I took on a yearling filly that was in extremely poor condition - so weak from starvation, injury and parasites that I wasn't sure she would survive the trailer journey home.

A few days later she displayed the same symptoms and like you I assumed strangles, but a swab test showed it was SZ.
She had to have two different kinds of antibiotic, can't remember the details but I think it was because the initial course was to treat strangles but when it turned out not to be, she had to have another type specifically for the SZ. She was fully recovered in a couple of weeks, bearing in mind she was in a bad state to begin with, so I would have thought a healthy horse would have little trouble.

 

[apachediamond]

Yep my boy had this last October. He spent a week in York Minster on a drip before coming home and having a further 5 weeks of antibiotics.

He recovered fully and was brought back into full work at the end of last November with no ill effects.

No idea where he contracted it from, I'd had him for 5 months before he came down ill.

 

[paddy555]

gosh this brings back memories. Mine was around 18,had been with me for 17 years and was fit and in very good condition. No idea why he was affected. None of the rest were, ours are a closed herd on our own land and don't mix with other horses.By the time were realised it was too late to isolate anyone. We had no idea how he got it as he never went to events or mixed with strange horses etc.

Swab was taken and vet didn't want to give antibiotics until results known. Horse took a turn for the worse, he was going round in circles on a rope, trying to throw himself onto the ground and was very distressed. We had serious doubts he was going to make it. I remember screaming at my very good vet on the phone to get someone out now. They did and spent about an hour with him treating him and trying to see if it would work. I think it took 2 nights of l living in his stable before we were satisfied he would be OK.

At it's peak it was very nasty and we were suprised he was still with us. I hope your horse recovers OK. Mine was rideable and perfectly normal afterwards.

 

[EstherYoung]

That's a blast from the past! The yard where I used to work where pretty much everything got strangles, the boss used to say that all of hers had SZ. Some of them did, probably, but most had full blown strangles. Some had multiple infections. They all recovered though, both from that and strangles. We used to treat as strangles.

The only slight caveat is that my boss did get sued once for selling a pony with SZ, and one of the things that was raised as part of the case was that SZ can affect humans. I'm not sure how true that is, and certainly we never got ill handling her many sick ponies (don't ask...), but it might be worth bearing in mind.

 

[Buddy'sMum]

SZ is an opportunistic pathogen in horses - it can live in the respiratory tract and lungs without causing problems. SZ infections are often secondary to viral respiratory infections, so possibly your mare picked up a virus on the trip over from Ireland which then provided the perfect environment for the SZ infection, rather than something that's been brought onto your yard.

Esther's right, there have been a few reports of SZ infections being transmitted from horses to humans and it can be very nasty in humans, so be extra careful hygiene wise - don't go snogging your mare. Hope she's better soon.

 

[glinda]

Thank you for all your replies everyone- very interesting reading your stories.

I decided it was not worth trying to isolate my girl from the rest of my gang as she had been in close contact with them all before the diagnosis. So far the others are all fine.

She is doing better on the antibiotics, the snotty nose has mostly cleared up now but she is still coughing…. I am waiting to hear back from the vets with the culture/sensitivity results to make sure she is taking the right ones. In herself she is fine- unless you knew you wouldn't think anything was wrong so iv'e got everything crossed.

It certainly seems to be a nasty bug though! Lots of hand washing and disinfecting for me then !