Journal article
Voriconazole successfully treats chytridiomycosis in frogs
Laura A Brannelly, Preeti Sharma, Sofia Ballesteros, Alexander S Wendt
Diseases of Aquatic Organisms | Inter-Research Science Publisher | Published : 2024
DOI: 10.3354/dao03795
Abstract
Chytridiomycosis is a devastating disease and is a key cause of amphibian population declines around the world. Despite active research on this amphibian disease system for over 2 decades, we still do not have treatment methods that are safe and that can be broadly used across species. Here, we show evidence that voriconazole is a successful method of treatment for 1 species of amphibian in captivity and that this treatment could offer benefits over other treatment options like heat or itraconazole, which are not able to be used for all species and life stages. We conducted 2 treatments of chytridiomycosis using voriconazole. The treatment was effective and resulted in 100% pathogen clearanc..
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Awarded by Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Shari Cohen, Assoc. Prof. Lee Berger, and the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine student volunteers for helping with the treatment of the frogs. We thank Hong Lu for assistance with animal husbandry. The animals were maintained under The University of Melbourne animal ethics application 10267 and collected under Victoria Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning Wildlife Act 1975 and National Parks Act 1975 Research Permit numbers 10008829 and 10010779. This work was supported by the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation (Inlaks Ravi Sankaran Conservation Fellowship 2019), the Australian Research Council (DE180101395), and The University of Melbourne.