Wampa, a beautiful young snowy owl presented to the clinic with the not unusual history in the avian patient of ‘she just ain’t doing right’.
As a bird flown in educational displays, she was now reluctant to fly, not her usual bouncy self with a reduced appetite.
Our clients know their birds very well, as I do my own falcon and dog, and so they are always taken seriously in this situation and Wampa was admitted for a diagnostic work up to try and establish a likely underlying cause.
Our first thought, given its over-representation in juvenile Arctic species and the above, was aspergillosis and when endoscopy revealed haemorrhages in the lung with some cream coloured plaques our suspicions were increased, but at least at this level with the modern antifungal medications available what was a possible death sentence 20 years ago is now fully amenable to treatment and that was our plan until Carli looked at a blood smear and noted over half of Wampa’s red blood cells were infected with an insect borne blood avian malarial parasite ‘haemoproteus’!!
This was certainly a surprise but explained her lack of energy and the lung changes with the parasite also existing and causing damage to the blood vessels of the lung, spleen and liver.
I had previously dealt with malaria in birds during my residency in Minnesota with one memorable case in a Harpy eagle that although successfully treated with the human antimalarial ‘Lariam’, as is seen in some human patients this usually very social educational eagle became quite obviously paranoid until he finished the meds and a paranoid Harpy eagle can be a force to be reckoned with I can tell you!!
This was over 20 years ago so quick literature search revealed an Italian paper that described the successful treatment of malaria in snowy owls using the human drug Malarone. This is certainly not something we had on the shelf, but our local chemist, Rudheath Pharmacy, were extremely helpful and keen to help Wampa and we were able to collect some and administer it that afternoon, as time was certainly of the essence. We also started her on the antifungal voriconazole as we suspected early aspergillosis, which is always waiting in the wings to jump on the failing immune system of any sick/injured Arctic/Antarctic species.
Thankfully with these on board and the owners care and attention she rapidly improved day by day until two weeks later she was back to her normal self with the blood smear 99.9% clear of the parasite with only a single infected cell found.
A further blood sample taken three months after her initial presentation happily showed no further evidence of the malarial parasite and we recently received this email from her owners at Muncaster Castle about an event, now back in action, she had recently taken part in;
“Our Silent Night event on Saturday was a triumph. All the birds (and staff) were ace but the absolute star of the evening was Wampa. In the pre-display talk Emma ensured everyone knew that your treatment saved her life and rejuvenated her. I was so happy to see her commanding the darkness and finishing the event brilliantly”.
This is the sort of message that always makes our day and this line of ‘work’ so special!
We will continue to monitor her blood and following discussions with colleagues in the zoo world we have put in place measures to reduce biting insect exposure which transmit the parasite such as 3 monthly fipronil application, minimising standing water and what I found interesting was planting lavender around the aviaries which seems to have natural insect repellent qualities.
Please don’t worry as malaria is extremely unlikely to cause a problem in most species and such parasites circulate in the wild constantly. Our native birds will have been exposed to them for years via birds migrating back and forth to Africa and so have evolved an immune system to cope with it, but snowy owls and penguins being out of their homeland are clearly very susceptible.
As we are seeing in other species (blue tongue virus now causing problems in ruminants for example) with the current warming global climate I suspect there will be a marked increase in the incidence of insect borne diseases such as malaria and pox virus (which has been more prevalent in goshawks recently).