Treatment
Exposing infected amphibians to temperatures of 25°C for a 10-day period will result in the death of Bsal, as the pathogen’s optimal temperature range is between 10°-15°C, and the healing of associated lesions. This is of course taking into consideration the clinical stage of the disease and the amphibians’ thermal tolerance (Martel et al., 2013; Blooi et at., 2015).Blooi et al. (2015) also described a treatment protocol using a combination of Voriconazole (12.5 µg/ml), Polymyxin E (2000 IU/ml) twice daily at an ambient temperature of 20°C which cleared the infection in infected salamanders in 10 days.
Prevention
There is currently no record in the literature of any vaccines developed as prophylaxis against Bsal. According to Garner et al. (2016), the development of an efficacious vaccine would be labour-intensive and extremely expensive. Recent information from Stegen et al. (2017) described a lack of protective immune response in salamanders and that, even after repeated infection, their resistance to Bsal did not increase. This finding has negative implications for vaccination and development of immunity in infected populations as possible mitigation measures. However, Bsal research is still considered to be in it’s infancy. There remains much more to be elucidated on the immunogenetics of susceptible host species and the biology and ecology of the pathogen itself which will determine the feasibility of imminent efficacious prevention strategies.