Clinicopathological studies of gastrointestinal disease in macaques.

Evaluation of mortality during a two-year period at a primate colony indicated that 34% of nonexperimental deaths in macaques one year of age and older were due to gastrointestinal disease. Of deaths related to gastrointestinal disease, 12% had acute gastric dilatation, 18% had shigellosis, 12% had nontuberculous mycobacterial disease, and 58% were of undetermined cause. Histologic evaluation of the alimentary tract indicated that the large intestine was the most common site of anatomical change in monkeys that had diarrhea at the time of death. Monkeys that had a single terminal episode of diarrhea had less gastric inflammatory lesions than those that had multiple episodes of diarrhea in the last year of life.