Summary
The
most common forms of inflammation of the lower respiratory tract
in lambs are acute enzootic pneumonia, caused mainly by Mannheimia
haemolytica, chronic enzootic pneumonia (defined as atypical
in lambs), the aetiological of which is Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae
and viral inflammation principally caused by parainfluenza virus
type 3. The authors conducted anatomopathological and histopathological
studies of the most commonly encountered spontaneous lung inflammations
in lambs slaughtered in the Abruzzo region of Italy, with special
attention to atypical pneumonia. Microbiological isolations
and a histopathological and immunohistochemical analysis were performed
to reveal any possible correlations between causal agents and lesion
patterns. Positive results for M. ovipneumoniae were
compared to those for Mycoplasma isolation to evaluate the
sensitivity of the two techniques. Of a total of 156 samples,
31 (19.8%) demonstrated involvement of M. ovipneumoniae,
15 (9.6%) were positive on microbiological isolation confirmed by
typing with biomolecular methods and, finally, histological lesions
(atypical pneumonia) were observed in the remaining 16 cases
(10.2%). Of these 31 samples, 23 (14.7% of the total)
demonstrated postive antigen in alveolar macrophages and giant cells
on immunohistochemical testing. These data revealed the presence
of chronic enzootic pneumonia in the Abruzzo area and the importance
of immunohistochemistry (in combination with isolation and anatomopathological
and histopathological examination) for the diagnosis of pneumonia
caused by M. ovipneumoniae, as well as the high sensitivity
shown by antigen marker expression, even in samples where bacterial
load was limited.
Keywords
Histopathology,
Immunohistochemistry, Lambs, Mannheimia haemolytica, Mycoplasma
ovipneumoniae, Parainfluenza virus type 3, Pneumonia. |