Salmon poisoning disease (SPD) is a fatal disease of dog

Dog

The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...

s and other canid

Canidae

Canidae is the biological family of carnivorous and omnivorous mammals that includes wolves, foxes, jackals, coyotes, and domestic dogs. A member of this family is called a canid . The Canidae family is divided into two tribes: Canini and Vulpini...

s caused by infection with a type of rickettsia

Rickettsia

Rickettsia is a genus of non-motile, Gram-negative, non-sporeforming, highly pleomorphic bacteria that can present as cocci , rods or thread-like . Being obligate intracellular parasites, the Rickettsia survival depends on entry, growth, and replication within the cytoplasm of eukaryotic host cells...

, Neorickettsia helminthoeca. It results from eating raw salmon

Salmon

Salmon is the common name for several species of fish in the family Salmonidae. Several other fish in the same family are called trout; the difference is often said to be that salmon migrate and trout are resident, but this distinction does not strictly hold true...

, trout

Trout

Trout is the name for a number of species of freshwater and saltwater fish belonging to the Salmoninae subfamily of the family Salmonidae. Salmon belong to the same family as trout. Most salmon species spend almost all their lives in salt water...

, or Pacific giant salamander

Giant salamander

The hellbender and Asian giant salamanders are aquatic amphibians found in brooks and ponds in the United States, China, and Japan. They are the largest living amphibians known today...

 and is found in the Pacific Northwest

Pacific Northwest

The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...

. These fish and amphibians are infected with metacercariae of a fluke

Trematoda

Trematoda is a class within the phylum Platyhelminthes that contains two groups of parasitic flatworms, commonly referred to as "flukes".-Taxonomy and biodiversity:...

, Nanophyetus salmincola

Nanophyetus salmincola

Nanophyetus salmincola may be the most common trematode endemic to the United States. In particular, the parasite is a food-borne intestinal trematode prevalent in the coast of the Pacific Northwest....

through an intermediate host

Intermediate host

A secondary host or intermediate host is a host that harbors the parasite only for a short transition period, during which some developmental stage is completed. For trypanosomes, the cause of sleeping sickness, humans are the primary host, while the tsetse fly is the secondary host...

, the snail

Snail

Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...

 Oxytrema plicifer. The fluke attaches to the intestine of the dog and the rickettsiae are released, causing severe gastrointestinal disease and systemic infection.

Neorickettsia elokominica, carried by the same fluke, causes a similar disease known as Elokomin fluke fever (EFF) in canids, bear

Bear

Bears are mammals of the family Ursidae. Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans, with the pinnipeds being their closest living relatives. Although there are only eight living species of bear, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern...

s, raccoon

Raccoon

Procyon is a genus of nocturnal mammals, comprising three species commonly known as raccoons, in the family Procyonidae. The most familiar species, the common raccoon , is often known simply as "the" raccoon, as the two other raccoon species in the genus are native only to the tropics and are...

s, and ferret

Ferret

The ferret is a domesticated mammal of the type Mustela putorius furo. Ferrets are sexually dimorphic predators with males being substantially larger than females. They typically have brown, black, white, or mixed fur...

s.

Symptoms of SPD begin about one week after eating the salmon and include vomiting, diarrhea, loss of appetite, depression, high fever, and enlarged lymph node

Lymph node

A lymph node is a small ball or an oval-shaped organ of the immune system, distributed widely throughout the body including the armpit and stomach/gut and linked by lymphatic vessels. Lymph nodes are garrisons of B, T, and other immune cells. Lymph nodes are found all through the body, and act as...

s. Untreated, mortality

Mortality rate

Mortality rate is a measure of the number of deaths in a population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit time...

 reaches 90 percent. Death occurs seven to ten days after symptoms begin.

Diagnosis is through finding the fluke eggs microscopically in a stool sample. A needle aspiration biopsy

Needle aspiration biopsy

Needle aspiration biopsy , may refer to fine needle aspiration cytology , fine needle aspiration biopsy and fine needle aspiration , is a diagnostic procedure sometimes used to investigate superficial lumps or masses...

 of an enlarged lymph node will reveal rickettsial organisms within macrophage

Macrophage

Macrophages are cells produced by the differentiation of monocytes in tissues. Human macrophages are about in diameter. Monocytes and macrophages are phagocytes. Macrophages function in both non-specific defense as well as help initiate specific defense mechanisms of vertebrate animals...

s in many cases. The rickettsial infection can be successfully treated with antibiotic

Antibiotic

An antibacterial is a compound or substance that kills or slows down the growth of bacteria.The term is often used synonymously with the term antibiotic; today, however, with increased knowledge of the causative agents of various infectious diseases, antibiotic has come to denote a broader range of...

s such as tetracycline, and the fluke infection can be treated with fenbendazole

Fenbendazole

Fenbendazole is a broad spectrum benzimidazole anthelmintic used against gastrointestinal parasites including roundworms, hookworms, whipworms, the taenia species of tapeworms, pinworms, aelurostrongylus, paragonimiasis, strongyles and strongyloides and can be administered to sheep, cattle,...

.

EFF has less severe symptoms than SPD, with less gastrointestinal signs and more lymph node involvement. The mortality in untreated cases is about ninety percent.

A similar disease has been identified in Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

.