hi everyone im new and have a question

[p.babineau42]

I have a 16foot Burmese python that is very sick with Burmese disease.
what can i do to treat ???

[Aaron_S]

So this is what I found by googling the words "burmese disease". It came up with another forum asking a similar question to you as well as an answer that has come from Dave Barker for VPI. I will copy and paste the text I found from the site here as well as the link. It IS old, from 2001 I believe but I still think some information can be had from it.

Burmese Disease [Archive] - Herp-Fan Forums (http://forums.bobclark.com/archive/index.php?t-802.html)

"This is a long answer and I’m going to post it at the VPI MailBag rather than at the forum.

The “Burmese disease” is an incurable disease. Little is published about the disease and nothing is known about the cause. It affects mainly Burmese pythons, but we know it to also have infected African rocks, blood pythons, and Borneo short-tailed pythons that were exposed to infected Burmese. I’ve not seen it or heard reports of it in ball pythons or reticulated pythons, but it’s certainly possible.

BD is not the result of inbreeding weakness; if exposed, any Burmese python will get it. However, some snakes do seem to have an inheritable greater susceptibility to BD. I don’t know if you’ve noticed how few green Burmese there are around these days. That particular lineage is particularly susceptible to the BD; there are very few big greens around any more. Over the past decade I’ve had a lot of communication with people with greens that were fighting the problem. Greens are not rare because keepers don’t like them, it’s because they die.

The Burmese disease is transmitted by contact and also by mites. It’s rarely seen in animals under 30 months of age. Whether or not young snakes actually have the disease but don’t express it is not known. It’s possible that the hatchlings from infected mothers might have the disease but remain symptomless until two-and-a-half years of age—who knows?

The Burmese disease itself doesn’t really have it’s own symptoms. The typical symptom is repeated bouts with pneumonia, a condition to which Burmese pythons are normally fairly resistant. The Burmese disease causes some sort of immuno-suppression that causes the snakes to be very susceptible to secondary respiratory infections. It can be compared to the relationship between AIDS and pneumococcal pneumonia in humans.

The typical BD-related respiratory infection is pneumonia caused by Pseudomonas. In fact, when cultures are run, usually they will come back with only Pseudomonas evident. The symptom of the Burmese disease is the affected snake repeatedly gets severe pneumonia, until eventually the snake dies of pneumonia.

A snake afflicted with BD-related pneumonia coughs up thick yellow mucus, often coughing it out of the glottis with such force that it can be found stuck all over the walls of the cage. The cause of death is almost always asphyxiation, because snakes really aren’t built to cough well (long thin trachea and no diaphragm) and these vanilla-pudding boogers get caught in their trachea.

Autopsy usually reveals a healthy snake except that there is an obstruction in the trachea and either a large ball of unattached free-floating thick yellow goo filling one or both lungs, or the entire surface of the vascular portion of the lungs coated with thick yellow goo. Culturing the stuff in the lungs and the lung tissue usually found only Pseudomonas.

About six or seven years ago, researchers from the University of Florida told us that snakes with the Burmese disease have lesions in their lungs that are typical of retrovirus, but the last I heard, no one has isolated the pathogen responsible for the condition. The lesions can be seen only with electron microscopy, so it’s beyond most vets. And to be realistic, so little is known about snake pulmonary conditions that there are very few people who could say what is “normal” and what is not.

Personally it’s my opinion that the Burmese disease is the primary reason why the “Burmese craze” of the early 1990s died out so quickly. Lots of economic reasons have been cited, but few people realized then or now that the main breeders of Burmese pythons were losing most of their big breeders and most of them eventually lost heart and gave up. The disease is a heartbreak..."

[PDXErik]

Wow. I hope you may be mistaken with the diagnosis.

Be sure to keep us updated with what happened. Are you right? How long has it had it? How did you first know? What can you tell us that might help the rest of us?That sucks as... right can't curse.

That really sucks.

Good luck.

[p.babineau42]

hi every one thankyou for you're fast responce to my question i found out that my 16ft pythone has Burmises d. it has been getting very hard i found this out by the way he has been acting alote of spitting getting alot of R.I diffrent coller mucous on the faq sheet it tells me about the Bd .sory to say i hade a very bad day on the 20th he past away he also got a very hight temp the vet told me that ' at that time thay could not do anything for him Bd is not curable and that he hade to of gotton it when he was about 2 or 3 years old By Mites i have 2 more Burmises at home 1 10ft and the outher 13ft boy 'girl i got the big one last monday from the internet i paid 500.00 for him just to find out that it was in very poor shape so i think that im going to call the m.s.p.c.a on that person with a letter from my vet on the shape he was in when i got him i am still very upset it is not the money i love all my snakes very much as much as my own kids for all of you out their be carfull what you get on the net from creigs list /Pets i hope that i was very helpfull do you think i shoud do should i call the m.s.p.c.a and fight this or just take my loss. i will be posting pictures latter of my snakes so peaple can see them i also have one ball pythone about 4-1/2 feet