Pneumocystis murina

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I am looking for some help regarding a positive test for Pneumocystis murina that we got on serology from 1 animal out of 5 screened in a facility where I am the NVS.

All the animals appear healthy and we are seeing no clinical signs of infection, and as far as we can see there is no evidence of interference with the ongoing projects.

My understanding is that prevention and treatment is difficult and that rederivation by embryo transfer or hysterectomy would be the best option. I would be interested to hear if anybody has had any success with treatment with potentiated sulfamethoxazole, or is this just a means of suppressing the infection? The infected animal was a C57 immunocompetent animal, we do have a SCID room where there is no evidence of infection on screens or clinically.

Pathologists looking at tox studies were very used to seeing the lung pathology caused by this organism for many years before it was identified. Maybe one of them will comment. Never produced any clinical disease or any apparent interference with these studies. Just accepted as ‘normal’ background lesions. I understand it’s much less common these days.

Is the positive animal a "representation" of an animal room of immunocompetent animals? How is this microbiological unit connected with the SCID room you are mentioning?  Nothing to worry about in immunocompetent animals.