Torchbearer: Summer 1998

Vets Study Elephant Disease

S. Yvonne Loveday

Two UTK researchers have been instrumental in searching for the cause of a mystery ailment among Asian elephants in national zoos.

Dr. Melissa Kennedy and Dr. Stephen Kania of the UT College of Veterinary Medicine were part of a national effort to identify and treat a herpes-like disease that killed 16-month-old Kumari, an elephant at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

"Our connection with the National Zoo was through Dr. Laura Richman, who was a resident here [UTK] in pathology a couple of years ago," says Kennedy. "Because she knew us and was familiar with our lab, she decided to use us to do some virology work."

Richman is a National Zoo pathologist.

Not many laboratories can do diagnostics for exotic animals, Kennedy says. The vet school's location–close to the Knoxville Zoo, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and various animal preserves–provides it with ample opportunities.

Kennedy, also an instructor at UTK, has worked to isolate the virus in the laboratory, so far to no avail.

"If it is indeed a herpes virus, these viruses are notoriously difficult to grow in the lab," Kennedy says. "It can be a problem to get a virus that grows well in an animal to grow well in a cell culture, which is what we have to do to isolate it."

Kania, an immunologist, has worked to create reagents, substances used to detect antibodies that may be associated with viruses known to scientists. An unknown disease can sometimes be detected by the antibodies that fight it in the blood, he says.

Commercial reagents are plentiful for cats, dogs, and other domestic animals, but none existed for the Asian elephant until Kania created it.

When a young elephant in a Missouri zoo, Baby Chandra, came down with similar symptoms last winter, she received massive doses of antibiotics and the anti-viral medication, famciclovir, a drug used to fight shingles and genital herpes in humans. Chandra was the tenth elephant in the country to be diagnosed with the disease, and the first to survive.

"There may have been others that have been infected and actually died from this virus before we were aware of it," Kennedy says.

Only 100 elephants have been born in captivity in this century.

Researchers think Kumari at the National Zoo, seven other elephants in North America, and an elephant at the Zurich Zoo in Europe may have died from the disease.

Symptoms include loss of appetite and bleeding from the tongue. The recovery supports the possibility of the herpes-type virus, Kennedy says.

"The symptoms may disappear, but the virus remains in the body in a latent state," she says. "If the virus should come out of latency, there's the potential for the infection of other animals. That's one reason why it's so important to find out what kind of virus it is."

A cure is especially crucial because Asian elephants like Chandra are an endangered species, with only 500 in captivity in North America and fewer than 35,000 in the wild.

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