Department of Internal Medicine, Reproduction, and Population Medicine, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ghent University, Merelbeke, Belgium.
Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain, Brussels, Belgium.
Vet Rec. 2023 Oct 7;193(7):e2880. doi: 10.1002/vetr.2880. Epub 2023 Apr 3.
Anaplasma phagocytophilum is a tick-borne zoonotic bacterium that is the aetiologic pathogen of tick-borne fever (TBF) in ruminants. In clinical bovine cases of TBF, abortion and stillbirth may be observed. However, in this regard, the pathophysiology of TBF has not yet been completely elucidated, and no clear guidelines to diagnose A. phagocytophilum-related abortions and perinatal mortalities (APM) are available.
This exploratory study aimed to investigate the presence of A. phagocytophilum in bovine cases of APM and determine whether placental or fetal spleen tissue has the greatest sensitivity for A. phagocytophilum identification. The placenta and fetal spleen of 150 late-term bovine APM cases were analysed using real-time PCR to detect A. phagocytophilum.
A total of 2.7% of sampled placentas were positive for A. phagocytophilum, while none of the fetal spleen samples was.
No histopathology to detect associated lesions was performed. Consequently, no evidence of causality between the detection of A. phagocytophilum and APM events could be achieved.
The detection of A. phagocytophilum suggests a potential role of this pathogen in bovine APM, and placental tissue seems to be the most suitable tissue for its identification.
嗜吞噬细胞无形体（Anaplasma phagocytophilum）是一种蜱传的人畜共患病细菌，是反刍动物蜱传发热（Tick-borne fever，TBF）的病原体。在临床牛 TBF 病例中，可能会观察到流产和死产。然而，在这方面，TBF 的病理生理学尚未完全阐明，也没有明确的诊断嗜吞噬细胞无形体相关流产和围产儿死亡（APM）的指南。
本探索性研究旨在调查 APM 牛病例中嗜吞噬细胞无形体的存在，并确定胎盘或胎儿脾脏组织对嗜吞噬细胞无形体鉴定的敏感性最高。使用实时 PCR 分析 150 例晚期 APM 牛病例的胎盘和胎儿脾脏，以检测嗜吞噬细胞无形体。
共 2.7%的采样胎盘对嗜吞噬细胞无形体呈阳性，而无一例胎儿脾脏样本呈阳性。
未进行检测相关病变的组织病理学检查。因此，无法证明嗜吞噬细胞无形体的检测与 APM 事件之间存在因果关系。
嗜吞噬细胞无形体的检测表明该病原体可能在牛 APM 中起作用，胎盘组织似乎是鉴定该病原体的最适宜组织。
