An abnormally high occurrence of malformed kinocilia in the tracheal epithelium of a clinically healthy rabbit.

An abnormally high occurrence of malformed kinocilia containing axonemes with different number or arrangement of microtubules compared with the typical 9+2 pattern of motile cilia was encountered in the tracheal epithelium of one clinically healthy rabbit. The malformed cilia amounted to 6.87% of all kinocilia. Individual types of ciliary malformations were further classified. The frequency of ciliary malformations was compared with that in all other rabbits the ciliary border of which has been quantitatively evaluated in our laboratory. Using Grubbs test the extremely low probability of occurrence of such a high number of malformed kinocilia in the rabbits' population was verified. The studied rabbit suffered from a mild form of the immotile cilia syndrome, but the loss of less than 10% of moving cilia did not lead to the expression of the clinical signs of the impaired function of cilia in the organism.