Health: Parvovirus

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"Parvo" is a word most puppy owners learn, and learn to dread. It's short for canine parvovirus, the most common infectious dog disease in the U.S.

Even though it's a relatively new disease in the dog world, parvo's ubiquitous--present at significant levels in every environment, from home to kennel to park. In fact, trying to shield a puppy from exposure is considered completely futile in this day and age. It's a ridiculously tough virus that can survive for months on living things, and even on objects such as furniture, toys, and carpets.

It's a serious infection, too: it can kill in a matter of days, and it's 80 percent fatal. Puppies less than six months old and older dogs are the most vulnerable. Luckily, a simple vaccine is all it takes to prevent this horrible disease.

Causes

Parvo is actually a family of viruses. Many mammals have some version of it, including humans, though fortunately parvo doesn't pass from species to species--each type of animal gets its own special version. It was first isolated back in the 1960s, but a mutant form called CPV-2 appeared virtually overnight in 1978. Then a mutation of that showed up in 1979, causing a true health crisis in the canine world--an epidemic that killed thousands of pets and triggered a vaccine shortage.

Today that virus has been supplanted by a version called CPV-2b, but because of vaccination for puppies and tight health controls, there are very few cases of adult parvo; it's considered a "puppy disease." Still, it's very serious: dogs catch parvo and die from it every year. (There's some talk of other strains beginning to emerge, but they've yet to be formally identified.)

The virus itself is deceptively simple: just a single strand of DNA, without the usual sheath of fat to protect it. This, ironically,  [Continued]