Abstract
Cardiovascular disease is increasingly recognized as an important cause of morbidity and mortality in captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). This report records 2 cases of sudden cardiac death in closely related subadult captive chimpanzees with marked replacement fibrosis and adipocyte infiltration of the myocardium, which resemble specific atypical forms of the familial human disease arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy. Changes were consistent with left-dominant and biventricular subtypes, which are both phenotypic variants found within human families with familial arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy. Previously reported fibrosing cardiomyopathies in chimpanzees were characterized by nonspecific interstitial fibrosis, in contrast to the replacement fibrofatty infiltration with predilection for the outer myocardium seen in these 2 cases. To the authors' knowledge, this case report is the first to describe cardiomyopathy resembling arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy in nonhuman primates and the first to describe left-dominant arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy-type lesions in an animal.
Highlights
IntroductionThis report records 2 cases of sudden cardiac death in closely related subadult captive chimpanzees with marked replacement fibrosis and adipocyte infiltration of the myocardium, which resemble specific atypical forms of the familial human disease arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy
Cardiovascular disease is increasingly recognized as an important cause of morbidity and mortality in captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).* In the past 2 decades, cardiovascular disease has overtaken infectious disease as the primary cause of death of captive chimpanzees.[52]
Cardiac disease was not considered a significant pathological finding in any chimpanzee in this study, and cardiac findings were limited to 2 chimpanzees with mild to moderate myocardial fibrosis that had a predilection for periarteriolar myocardium.[50]
Summary
This report records 2 cases of sudden cardiac death in closely related subadult captive chimpanzees with marked replacement fibrosis and adipocyte infiltration of the myocardium, which resemble specific atypical forms of the familial human disease arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy. Cardiovascular disease is increasingly recognized as an important cause of morbidity and mortality in captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).* In the past 2 decades, cardiovascular disease has overtaken infectious disease as the primary cause of death of captive chimpanzees.[52] Sudden cardiac death (SCD) secondary to fibrosing cardiomyopathy occurs in a significant proportion of these cases.[19,20,52] Fibrosing cardiomyopathies have been reported in captive western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus).[26,36] it is recognized that cardiomyopathies are a very important disease group of captive great apes, the etiology of these conditions remains a mystery. This report records 2 cases of sudden cardiac death in closely related subadult captive chimpanzees that resemble specific atypical forms of the familial human disease—arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC). This report describes the clinical and pathological features associated with 2 sudden deaths within the captive chimpanzee population at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo in the United Kingdom that closely resemble left-dominant and biventricular variants of ARVC in humans
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