Potential Pathogens Reported in Species of the Family Viverridae and Their Implications for Human and Animal Health

Wicker, L. V.; Canfield, P. J.; Higgins, D. P.

A wide variety of zoonoses have been reported for captive viverrids (refer to 'Country (source)' columns, Tables 1-7), including the very high profile zoonotic virus HPAI H5N1 (Table 1) . This was confirmed on PCR and serology from a number of Owston's civets (Chrotogale owstoni) which died following an outbreak of respiratory and neurological diseases in a conservation breeding programme in Vietnam (Roberton et al., 2006) . While no evidence of viverrid-to-human transmission of HPAI H5N1 exists, isolation of pathogens with pandemic potential from any mammalian host is significant as it may provide conditions suitable for the virus to adapt to mammalian respiratory epithelial receptors, enabling efficient mammalto-human, and possibly also human-to-human, transmission, paving the way for a potentially devastating pandemic (Rimmelzwaan et al., 2006; Peiris et al., 2007) . Isolation of this virus from captive civets is also significant in that some countries with the highest number of human cases and fatalities due to HPAI H5N1, such as Indonesia, China and Vietnam (WHO, 2015) , overlap with those where civets are also farmed in the greatest numbers (Patou et al., 2009; D'Cruze et al., 2014) , a risk compounded by the poor standards of husbandry and lack of veterinary care reported for wildlife farms (WSPA, 1998; WCS, 2008) . Knowledge of susceptibility to zoonotic pathogens guides the development of appropriate quarantine and biosecurity protocols in captive institutions required to safeguard both human and animal health.