To the best of my understanding, treatment is not particularly rewarding
due to many resistant strains. There is a report of successful treatment
using rifampin, erythromycin, and streptomycin.1 These same drugs have been
used in humans for treatment of non-tuberculous mycobacterial infections,
however the treatment time is prolonged (18-24 mos.).2 For most short lived
fish, there is no way to be sure treatment has actually eliminated the
organism from the body and there is no test to diagnose this disease
antemortem (except for thoses fishes exhibiting skin lesions where the
organism can be tentatively identified from a skin scraping using an acid
fast stain).
Denise
Denise Petty, DVM
1. Noga, E., _Fish Disease_, Mosby, St. Louis, MO, 1996, 158.
2. Beran, G., _Handbook of Zoonoses: Bacterial, Rickettsial, Chlamydial,
and Mycotic_, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 1994, 56.