Diarrhea in nonhuman primates: a survey of primate colonies for incidence rates and clinical opinion.

Veterinary clinicians associated with 18 colonies of nonhuman primates were surveyed for their experience with diarrhea disease in colony animals for calendar year 1981. The 1981 diarrhea incidence rate, diarrhea-specific mortality rate and diarrhea case fatality rate for 13,385 monkeys were 10.6%, 1.2% and 11.1%, respectively. It was not possible to incriminate age or type of housing as risk factors for diarrhea, but some species seemed at greater risk than others. Erythrocebus patas monkeys had relatively high diarrhea incidence rates (18.8%) and the highest case fatality rate (48.4%) of all species surveyed. Squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) and baboons (Papio sp.) had low diarrhea incidence rates (2.1% and 3.2%, respectively). This opinion survey indicated a lack of uniformity among primate clinicians with respect to approaches to diagnosis and therapy of monkey diarrhea. The survey also suggested that many of the agents associated were perceived differently among primate clinicians, and that the roles of some agents are still poorly understood.