- Infectious Diseases of Livestock
- Part 3
- Other clostridial infections
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION: SPIROCHAETES
- Swine dysentery
- Borrelia theileri infection
- Borrelia suilla infection
- Lyme disease in livestock
- Leptospirosis
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION: AEROBIC ⁄ MICRO-AEROPHILIC, MOTILE, HELICAL ⁄ VIBROID GRAM-NEGATIVE BACTERIA
- Genital campylobacteriosis in cattle
- Proliferative enteropathies of pigs
- Campylobacter jejuni infection
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION: GRAM-NEGATIVE AEROBIC OR CAPNOPHILIC RODS AND COCCI
- Moraxella spp. infections
- Bordetella bronchiseptica infections
- Pseudomonas spp. infections
- Glanders
- Melioidosis
- Brucella spp. infections
- Bovine brucellosis
- Brucella ovis infection
- Brucella melitensis infection
- Brucella suis infection
- Brucella infections in terrestrial wildlife
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION: FACULTATIVELY ANAEROBIC GRAM NEGATIVE RODS
- Klebsiella spp. infections
- Escherichia coli infections
- Salmonella spp. infections
- Bovine salmonellosis
- Ovine and caprine salmonellosis
- Porcine salmonellosis
- Equine salmonellosis
- Yersinia spp. infections
- Haemophilus and Histophilus spp. infections
- Haemophilus parasuis infection
- Histophilus somni disease complex in cattle
- Actinobacillus spp. infections
- infections
- Actinobacillus equuli infections
- Gram-negative pleomorphic infections: Actinobacillus seminis, Histophilus ovis and Histophilus somni
- Porcine pleuropneumonia
- Actinobacillus suis infections
- Pasteurella and Mannheimia spp. infections
- Pneumonic mannheimiosis and pasteurellosis of cattle
- Haemorrhagic septicaemia
- Pasteurellosis in sheep and goats
- Porcine pasteurellosis
- Progressive atrophic rhinitis
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION: ANAEROBIC GRAM-NEGATIVE, IRREGULAR RODS
- Fusobacterium necrophorum, Dichelobacter (Bacteroides) nodosus and Bacteroides spp. infections
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION: GRAM-POSITIVE COCCI
- Staphylococcus spp. infections
- Staphylococcus aureus infections
- Exudative epidermitis
- Other Staphylococcus spp. infections
- Streptococcus spp. infections
- Strangles
- Streptococcus suis infections
- Streptococcus porcinus infections
- Other Streptococcus spp. infections
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION: ENDOSPORE-FORMING GRAM-POSITIVE RODS AND COCCI
- Anthrax
- Clostridium perfringens group infections
- Clostridium perfringens type A infections
- Clostridium perfringens type B infections
- Clostridium perfringens type C infections
- Clostridium perfringens type D infections
- Malignant oedema⁄gas gangrene group of Clostridium spp.
- Clostridium chauvoei infections
- Clostridium novyi infections
- Clostridium septicum infections
- Other clostridial infections
- Tetanus
- Botulism
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION: REGULAR, NON-SPORING, GRAM-POSITIVE RODS
- Listeriosis
- Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae infections
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION: IRREGULAR, NON-SPORING, GRAM-POSITIVE RODS
- Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis infections
- Corynebacterium renale group infections
- Bolo disease
- Actinomyces bovis infections
- Trueperella pyogenes infections
- Actinobaculum suis infections
- Actinomyces hyovaginalis infections
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION: MYCOBACTERIA
- Tuberculosis
- Paratuberculosis
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION: ACTINOMYCETES
- Nocardiosis
- Rhodococcus equi infections
- Dermatophilosis
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION: MOLLICUTES
- Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia
- Contagious caprine pleuropneumonia
- Mycoplasmal pneumonia of pigs
- Mycoplasmal polyserositis and arthritis of pigs
- Mycoplasmal arthritis of pigs
- Bovine genital mycoplasmosis
- Neurotoxin-producing group of Clostridium spp.
- Contagious equine metritis
- Tyzzer's disease
- MYCOTIC AND ALGAL DISEASES: Mycoses
- MYCOTIC AND ALGAL DISEASES: Pneumocystosis
- MYCOTIC AND ALGAL DISEASES: Protothecosis and other algal diseases
- DISEASE COMPLEXES / UNKNOWN AETIOLOGY: Epivag
- DISEASE COMPLEXES / UNKNOWN AETIOLOGY: Ulcerative balanoposthitis and vulvovaginitis of sheep
- DISEASE COMPLEXES / UNKNOWN AETIOLOGY: Ill thrift
- Eperythrozoonosis
- Bovine haemobartonellosis
Other clostridial infections
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Other clostridial infections
N P J KRIEK AND M W ODENDAAL
This chapter deals with a number of clostridia which are infrequently associated with disease. These include Clostridium sordellii, C. carnis, C. difficile and C. fallax. In general, they are associated with wound infections in which the clinical and pathologic features resemble those of malignant oedema or gas gangrene caused by the better-known histotoxic clostridia. In rare instances, as in the case of certain C. sordellii infections, they are also associated with sudden death in lambs or cattle, or with the occurrence of haemorrhagic enteritis in foals, sheep and feedlot cattle.
Clostridium sordellii infections
Introduction
Clostridium sordellii infection is associated sporadically with diarrhoea and haemorrhagic enteritis in cattle in feedlots, 1 adult sheep2 and foals,8 a sudden-death syndrome in lambs15 and feedlot cattle,6, 16 and malignant oedema which resembles that caused by C. novyi type A and C. septicum infections in cattle.20
Clostridium sordellii was first described by Sordelli in 1922 as Bacillus oedematiens sporogenes. It is often isolated in association with other bacteria, including the well-known histotoxic clostridia, and may not be of primary importance as a cause of disease.16
Aetiology
Clostridium sordellii is an anaerobic, Gram-positive, rodshaped bacterium with rounded ends, 2 to 4 μm long and 0,5 to 1 μm wide, and occurs singly or in pairs. The cells are motile by virtue of their peritrichous flagella. Spores often form and are oval, situated centrally or subterminally and swell the cell slightly.17 Sporulation occurs readily in media such as chopped meat broth incubated for 24 hours or blood agar plates after 48 hours’ incubation. On rabbit blood agar the bacterium is slightly beta-haemolytic, and the surface colonies are 1 to 4mm in diameter, have a circular or irregular outline, are translucent to opaque or grey with a dull-white, shiny surface, and have a granular or mottled internal structure. The margin of the colonies is scalloped, lobate or entire.5
The optimum temperature for growth is 30 to 37 °C with only moderate growth taking place at 25 °C and 45 °C. Growth is inhibited by incorporating 6,5 per cent sodium chloride and 20 per cent bile in the medium. Phosholipase C is produced in small amounts in culture and its production is best demonstrated on egg yolk agar. No lipase is produced. Clostridium sordellii has saccharolytic and proteolytic characteristics. Glucose and maltose are fermented, while strains vary in their ability to ferment arabinose, fructose, glycerol, raffinose, ribose, and xylose. Adonitol, amygdalin, cellobiose, cellulose, dulcitol, erythritol, esculin, galactose, glycogen, inositol, sorbose, starch, sucrose and trehalose are not fermented. Fermentation in a peptoneyeast extract broth yields large amounts of acetic, isobutyric and isovaleric acids, as well as smaller amounts of propionic and isocaproic acids.5, 14
Clostridium sordellii produces a variety of biological substances toxic to animals, though non-pathogenic strains do occur. The unnamed, major lethal exotoxin produces a severe, gelatinous oedema and is thermolabile and nonhaemolytic, while the lesser toxins include phospholipase C, an oxygen-labile haemolysin, a fibrinolysin, a collagenase, and those that are dermonecrotizing and haemorrhagic when injected into the skin of rats and guinea pigs.3, 17
Epidemiology
Clostridium sordellii can be isolated from soil, which is its principal habitat, and from the intestinal content of humans and animals. Faecal dissemination assists in the spread of the organism in the environment. Infections occur either by ingestion or by contamination of wounds.17
The conditions under which the disease syndromes caused by C. sordellii occur in livestock, and their predisposing factors, have not been clearly defined.
Pathogenesis
The pathogenesis of the disease syndromes is essentially unknown. Anaerobic conditions, such as those that exist in necrotic tissues, are required for growth and toxin production by the organism.17
Clinical signs and pathology
In experimental cases of the sudden death syndrome in cattle, affected animals have a marked increase in their respiratory rate, suddenly go down, and then die quickly—animals may be found dead after having been seen to be healthy as little as three hours earlier.6 The lesions in cattle that have died of the sudden death syndrome and of malignant oedema (the two designations probably referring to the same syndrome) are characterized by the infiltration of a haemorrhagic, inflammatory oedema of the peritracheal and peripharyngeal areas, with a particularly foul odour.18, 20 This oedema may extend to involve the subcutaneous tissues of the neck, but the muscles in the region are unaffected. It may also occur in the subcutaneous tissues of the hind limbs.16 Severe haemolysis is also evident in some of the cases, as detected in blood specimens presented for chemical pathology.6
A sudden death syndrome15 has been reported in lambs. Animals that have died of this syndrome reveal generalized congestion, marked ascites and hydropericardium, and a markedly enlarged, degenerated liver at necropsy.
Adult sheep and cattle affected by the enteric syndrome may show diarrhoea for some time...
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