Researchers May Have Unlocked Mystery Of Illness Sickening CT Dogs

CONNECTICUT — Researchers think they may have discovered the cause of a mystery respiratory illness that has sickened more than a dozen dogs in the Northeast.

Although the Connecticut Department of Agriculture said in a statement Wednesday that there aren’t any confirmed cases of the illness in the state as of Wednesday, a veterinarian in Guilford told NBC Connecticut he’s treated several dogs with the symptoms in recent months.

In a recent study, University of New Hampshire researchers used genetic sequencing of samples from 70 dogs in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Massachusetts that have gotten sick with the illness over the past two years.

They said the bacterium may be “host adapted,” possibly part of the dog microbiome that has developed the capacity to cause disease. Identifying the bacterium can lead to the development of effective treatments for the illness, which is resistant to antibiotics and other therapies, according to the study.

“If it is decided definitively that this unknown bacterium is causing some proportion of the noted respiratory syndrome, in-depth research can begin to find the proper medicine to combat it, which would be a significant breakthrough for veterinarians throughout the country,” the study said.

Veterinarians have been perplexed by both the cause and how to treat the mystery illness, which has killed some dogs. It starts with a cough that hangs on for several weeks, as well as sneezing and watery eyes. It can suddenly progress to pneumonia and even death.

“It seems to happen very, very quickly — to go from this cough that just won’t go away ... and then all of a sudden they develop this pneumonia,” Dr. Lindsey Ganzer, a veterinarian and CEO at North Springs Veterinary Referral Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, recently told “Today.”

Ganzer said most of the dogs seen at her clinic for the mystery illness had recently spent time at a boarding kennel, dog day care, groomer or dog park.

The illness has been reported, either officially or anecdotally, in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Oregon and Washington.

The researchers noted there’s still work to be done to verify the discovery, but the early findings are encouraging — and potentially game-changing.

“A finding like this is potentially pretty exciting, even though we still have to see how it develops to a place where we are comfortable saying this is a pathogen in the syndrome,” David Needle, pathology chief at the New Hampshire Veterinary Diagnostics Laboratory and a clinical professor in the university’s College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, said in a news release.

Needle and his colleagues describe the discovery as “something of a needle in a genomic haystack” because the bacterium is hard to find and sequence. After initial sequencing of 30 samples from dogs didn’t unlock the mystery, graduate student Lawrence Gordon made the breakthrough discovery — a small segment of genetic material from one atypical bacterial species was common in 21 of the 30 initial samples.

The researchers are now conducting genetic sequencing on samples of dogs from other states where dogs have gotten sick.