2012 Volume 65 Issue 6 Pages 449-451
A 3-year-old spayed ferret presented with a primary symptom of difficulty prehending food. Severe periodontitis in the right maxillary second and third premolar roots were observed. After matter sample was collected from the bottoms of the periodontal pockets, dental scaling, and tooth extraction were performed. The positive presence of Porphyromonas gingivalis and Tannerella forsythia was observed using a polymerase chain reaction method for identifying 8 common human periodontopathic bacteria, with lengths of 364 bp and 510 bp measured by direct sequencing, respectively. The sequences showed 100% and 99.8% similarity to the 16S rRNA gene in P. gulae and T. forsythia, respectively. This study shows, for the first time, molecular detection in a ferret of anaerobic bacteria from periodontal pockets identical to those found in humans, dogs, or cats.