An outbreak of multidrug-resistant salmonella has occurred at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center that was reported to have caused an unknown number of animal deaths. The Center and its Widener Hospital closed on Monday, May 10, so that appropriate decontamination procedures for the entire facility can be performed. This procedure will take about eight weeks.

According to Helma Weeks, director of communications for the university’s School of Veterinary Medicine, “At this point all services are closed and no patients are being seen by any service. The hospital will be re-opened after we have instituted appropriate bio-security measures to protect our patients. We have notified our referring veterinarians of the situation.”

Salmonella is often found in equine hospitals since stress can cause shedding in animals harboring the organism.

Salmonella species cause a multitude of diseases in horses, including diarrhea, abscesses, septicemia, and other ailments, according to information from Roberta Dwyer, DVM, Dipl. ACVPM, of the University of Kentucky’s Gluck Equine Research Center in the Equine Disease Quarterly. More than 2,200 serotypes of salmonellae are known and can be identified at the National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa. With the exception of S. typhi, which only affects humans, all other salmonellae are zoonotic–meaning they can be transmitted from animals to people