Sedgwick County Zoo elephant being treated for herpes
A Sedgwick County Zoo elephant is being treated for a herpes infection, zoo officials announced Thursday.
The 12-year-old African elephant, Zuberi, was found in a routine weekly blood test to have an elevated level of elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus, known as EEHV.
EEHV can be fatal, but Zuberi’s case was caught early — before any symptoms were evident — and zoo veterinarians think she’ll make a complete recovery, said zoo spokeswoman Jennica King.
The infection poses no danger to the other zoo animals or humans, King said.
The primary treatment for the EEHV is famciclovir, the same drug used in humans to treat recurrent cold sores, genital herpes or shingles.
“It’s the same medication, but we give her 65 pills in each dose,” King said. “They literally just place a handful of 20 pills at a time in her mouth. We saw her treatment that she got at 3 p.m. and it was just a handful of pills and a squirt of ranch dressing and she swallows them down, just like you would if you were a human taking a pill.”
Elephants are big fans of salad dressing, “which is really tasty to them,” King said.
In more advanced cases, elephants can be treated with stronger intravenous antiviral drugs and/or transfusions of plasma or whole blood from healthy elephants.
Practically all elephants have some EEHV in their blood, which usually remains latent and harmless. It’s unknown what triggers rapid replication of the virus, which can become a serious hemorrhagic disease.
Symptoms generally begin with lethargy and loss of appetite and can progress to swelling and lesions, according to a fact sheet from the International Elephant Foundation.
It is a disease of the young. Elephants over 15 seldom have a problem because their immune systems adapt to control the virus naturally, according to research.
The Indianapolis Zoo had four cases of EEHV in 2019. The first two elephants to develop the infection died, but the later two were saved with treatment.
Indianapolis zoo veterinarians are consulting with their Sedgwick County counterparts on Zuberi’s case, King said.
Zuberi hails from Swaziland and is one of several African elephants imported to Wichita in 2016, King said.
