Giebels, Felix; Geissbühler, Urs; Oevermann, Anna; Grahofer, Alexander; Olias, Philipp; Kuhnert, Peter; Maiolini, Arianna; Stein, Veronika Maria (2020). Vertebral fracture due to Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae osteomyelitis in a weaner. BMC veterinary research, 16(1) BioMed Central 10.1186/s12917-020-02656-1
|
Text
s12917-020-02656-1.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY). Download (2MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Background: Osteomyelitis is relatively frequent in young pigs and a few bacterial species have been postulated to
be potential causative agents. Although Actinobacillus (A.) pleuropneumoniae has been sporadically described to
cause osteomyelitis, typically, actinobacillosis is characterized by respiratory symptoms. Nevertheless, subclinical
infections are a challenging problem in pig herds. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first case description that
reports clinical, diagnostic imaging, pathological and histopathological findings of vertebral osteomyelitis in a pig
and first describes A. pleuropneumoniae as the causative agent identified by advanced molecular methods.
Case presentation: An eight-week-old female weaner was presented with a non-ambulatory tetraparesis. The
neurological signs were consistent with a lesion in the C6-T2 spinal cord segments. Imaging studies revealed a
collapse of the seventh cervical vertebral body (C7) with a well demarcated extradural space-occupying mass
ventrally within the vertebral canal severely compressing the spinal cord. Post-mortem examination identified an
abscess and osteomyelitis of C7 and associated meningitis and neuritis with subsequent pathological fracture of C7
and compression of the spinal cord. In the microbiological analysis, A. pleuropneumoniae was identified using PCR
and DNA sequence analysis.
Conclusions: A. pleuropneumoniae can be responsible for chronic vertebral abscess formation with subsequent
pathological fracture and spinal cord compression in pigs.
Keywords: Diskospondylitis, Abscess, Porcine, DNA sequence analysis
Background
Vertebral osteomyelitis is a well-known condition in
food animals and has been documented in various species
[1–4]. Nevertheless, to the authors’ knowledge no
case report
Actions (login required)
 |
Edit item |