Abstract
Previous reports of leukemia in hedgehogs are limited. We describe clinicopathologic features of leukemia in 9 hedgehogs, including eosinophilic leukemia (n = 3) and acute leukemia/leukemic phase of lymphoma (n = 6). All 3 hedgehogs with eosinophilic leukemia were older than 2 years of age; in contrast, 4 of 6 cases of acute leukemia/lymphoma were <2 years old. Hedgehogs presented for non-specific clinical signs of anorexia and lethargy. On hematologic testing, hedgehogs with eosinophilic leukemia had a marked leukocytosis, consisting mostly of eosinophilic precursors with fewer mature eosinophils, whereas there were 43–97% immature cells (blasts) in the blood of hedgehogs with acute leukemia/lymphoma. Anemia (n = 6) and/or thrombocytopenia (n = 6) were concurrent findings. Increased liver enzyme activities (alanine aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase) and hypoalbuminemia were the common findings on biochemical panels. All cases of eosinophilic leukemia and 4 cases of acute leukemia/lymphoma died shortly after diagnosis (median 7 days, range 0–41 days), whereas 2 cases of acute leukemia/lymphoma lived for 94 or 101 days. Postmortem examination in 5 cases (1 eosinophilic leukemia, 4 acute leukemia/lymphoma) showed bone marrow infiltrates, confirming eosinophilic leukemia and acute leukemia in 1 and 3 cases, and bone marrow necrosis in 1 animal with acute leukemia/lymphoma. Immunohistochemical staining of bone marrow sections confirmed a T-cell acute leukemia in 1 case. Several hedgehogs had concurrent carcinomas. Hedgehogs suffer from eosinophilic leukemia and acute leukemia/lymphoma. However, classification of acute leukemia by lineage was not possible due to lack of hedgehog cross-reactive or species-specific reagents.
Highlights
Spontaneous neoplasia is common in African Pygmy hedgehogs, with a reported disease prevalence of 30–60% [1,2,3,4,5,6]
There are limited reports of leukemia in pet African hedgehogs and most previously reported cases were diagnosed at postmortem examination, with little description of clinical pathologic findings [13,14,15,16]
The diagnosed cases were a mixture of eosinophilic leukemia and acute leukemia/lymphoma, with 1 confirmed case of T-cell acute leukemia
Summary
Spontaneous neoplasia is common in African Pygmy hedgehogs, with a reported disease prevalence of 30–60% [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Lymphoma is the most common reported type of hematopoietic tumor, with a disease prevalence ranging from 2 to 9% [1, 5, 6]. In one study of 63 cases, lymphoma was the second most common reported tumor [6]. In these reports, lymphoma usually involved multicentric peripheral lymph nodes, [1] with a few case reports of gastrointestinal, cutaneous and splenic forms [8,9,10,11]
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