Bid to cure koala's drooling disease

A koala with a serious slobbering problem could be saved with a treatment usually reserved for human cancer patients. The two-year-old koala, named Sprinkles, suffers from a rare disease called sialosis that causes excessive drooling. Brisbane Veterinary Specialist Centre's Dr Rod Straw says despite her playful name, life is not much fun for the young female, who can't survive in the wild. "The saliva drools out of her mouth, leaves wet skin, bacteria breed in it, and it causes inflammation of the skin and that's been a real problem for her," he said.

But crucially, the condition, which also occurs in humans, stops her from eating normally. "She needs help to maintain her weight, they've got to be very careful of what she gets fed and what leaves she eats and so on," Dr Straw said. "It gets in the way of her day-to-day life and the dermatitis is getting worse and worse so without treatment and intervention from humans she would probably succumb in the wild. This is serious enough that if we can't fix it then she's not a candidate to be released."



Sprinkles developed the condition as a patient at the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital, where she has lived as an orphan since her mother was killed by a car. "Once she came off the bottle she started to have a little bit of drooling and then it just gradually got worse and worse," Dr Straw said. "It's constant drooling especially when she's about to eat, or she's nervous ... it just starts pouring out round her face and down her legs." He's hoping the same radiation therapy given to human cancer patients will solve Sprinkles' saliva problem.

"We know that when we radiate people and animals in the head and neck their saliva production goes right down," he said. "We're going to capitalise on that information by radiating the normal salivary glands to decrease their function." The procedure has been performed successfully in humans with sialosis but Dr Straw admitted he was in "uncharted waters" with Sprinkles. After her first treatment, Sprinkles was doing fine - wrapped up in a towel and dozing like a koala should. She will receive a second dose of radiation in a week's time and will then be assessed to see if she needs a third.