Outbreak of neonatal diarrhea in farmed mink kits (Mustella vison) associated with enterotoxigenic Staphylococcus delphini.

An outbreak of diarrhea on a large commercial mink farm affected 5,000 of 36,000 neonatal mink kits, with 2,000 dying within a 2-week period. Affected kits were severely dehydrated, and their furcoats and paws were covered with yellow- to green-tinged mucoid feces. On necropsy, the small intestines of examined animals were markedly distended by serous to mucoid fluid. Microscopically, there was prominent colonization of the intestinal villar epithelium by gram-positive bacterial cocci in the absence of inflammation and morphologic changes in villous enterocytes. The colonizing bacteria were phenotypically identified as belonging to the Staphylococcus intermedius group of bacteria. This was confirmed by nucleic acid sequence analysis of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene. Further nucleic acid sequencing of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplicons from the superoxide dismutase gene and the heat shock protein 60 gene differentiated the isolate as Staphylococcus delphini. Production of staphylococcal enterotoxins A and E was demonstrated with a commercial ELISA-based immunoassay. Sequencing of PCR amplicons confirmed the presence of the enterotoxin E gene, but PCR amplification of the enterotoxin A, B, C, or D genes was not successful. Although direct causation was not confirmed in this study, the authors postulate that the observed hypersecretory diarrhea in these mink kits was the result of colonization of the small intestine by S delphini and subsequent production of enterotoxin.