Vertebral fracture due to Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae osteomyelitis in a weaner
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CASE REPORT
Open Access
Vertebral fracture due to Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae osteomyelitis in a weaner Felix Giebels1* , Urs Geissbühler2, Anna Oevermann3, Alexander Grahofer4, Philipp Olias5, Peter Kuhnert6, Arianna Maiolini1 and Veronika Maria Stein1
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 covers clinical, diagnostic imaging and pathological findings on this disease in pigs [1, 2, 5, 6]. In large animals, suppurative inflammation associated with the vertebral column is interchangeably used with a * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Division of Clinical Neurology, Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine, Vetsuisse Faculty, University of Bern, Länggassstrasse 128, 3012 Bern, Switzerland Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
wide range of terms, i. e. vertebral abscess [1, 7, 8], vertebral body abscess [4], spinal abscess [9, 10], epidural abscess [4], vertebral osteomyelitis [2, 3, 9, 11], vertebral suppurative osteomyelitis [12], and spinal abscess and cord compression syndrome [13]. In swine, different compartments of the vertebral column can be affected, accordingly the inflammation is classified as intravertebral (i. e. osteomyelitis of the vertebral body), paravertebral (i. e. spondylarthritis) or intradiscal (i. e. diskospondyliti
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