Abstract
The current article describes a spontaneous case of old dog encephalitis (ODE) in a 7-year-old, intact, female Miniature Schnauzer dog from Londrina, Paraná, southern Brazil. Unlike conventional distemper encephalomyelitis, ODE is a poorly understood and extremely rare manifestation of Canine distemper virus (CDV) infection. The dog was presented with progressive clinical manifestations consistent with cerebral dysfunction. Briefly, histopathologic lesions were restricted to the forebrain and included chronic multifocal lymphoplasmacytic encephalitis with extensive perivascular cuffing, astrocytosis, and intranuclear inclusions within astrocytes and giant cells, with both intracytoplasmic and intranuclear inclusions. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was used to identify the antigens of the nucleoprotein (NP) of CDV and to detect cluster of differentiation (CD)3, CD79a, macrophage (MAC) 387, glial fibrillary acidic protein, and vimentin to characterize the neuroparenchymal lesions. By IHC, CDV NP was demonstrated predominantly within neurons and astrocytes. Cells that formed perivascular cuffs and some astrocyte-like cells reacted intensely to vimentin. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction assay from brain sections further confirmed a role for CDV in this disease by the amplification and partial sequence analysis of the NP gene. These findings confirmed simultaneous detection of CDV in ODE by IHC and molecular assays. In addition, results of the current study could contribute to the neuropathologic characterization of this rare manifestation of CDV.
Highlights
Canine distemper virus (CDV; order Mononegavirales, family Paramyxoviridae, subfamily Paramyxovirinae, genus Morbillivirus) induces encephalomyelitis in dogs and other susceptible animals.[21]
Neurologic syndromes associated with CDV include canine distemper encephalomyelitis in immature dogs, multifocal distemper encephalomyelitis in mature animals, old dog encephalitis (ODE), chronic relapsing encephalomyelitis,[5,22] and post-vaccinal distemper encephalitis.[6,9]
The diagnosis of ODE was based on a combination of clinical findings, typical histologic lesions within the cerebrum, with marked sparing of the cerebellum and caudal brain stem, and the absence of CDVinduced alterations in other tissues
Summary
Canine distemper virus (CDV; order Mononegavirales, family Paramyxoviridae, subfamily Paramyxovirinae, genus Morbillivirus) induces encephalomyelitis in dogs and other susceptible animals.[21]. Most of the neuropathologic manifestations of CDV were reproduced experimentally, but, despite several attempts,[5,15,21,24] there was only 1 successful experimental reproduction of ODE.[3] the naturally occurring incidence of ODE is low, the pathogenesis is uncertain, and the precise host-CDV relationship is not well elucidated Spontaneous cases of this disease have not been recorded since 1970,21,22,24 CDV antigens in brain sections from naturally occurring cases of ODE have only been demonstrated once,[15] and molecular characterization of CDV from ODE cases has not been described previously. The purpose of the current report is to describe the molecular, pathologic, and immunohistochemical (IHC) findings of a naturally occurring case of ODE
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