Spontaneous Mammary Carcinoma in a Female Rabbit

Abstract

Spontaneous tumors in the rabbit are rare, particularly breast tumors. Few reports of mammary growths in this species appear in the literature, and all writers are agreed as to their infrequency. Polson (1) reviewed the records published prior to 1927, citing 52 cases of tumors in the rabbit. To these he added 14, bringing the total to 66. Statistics available at the time of his report showed that among 1100 rabbits, 13 had spontaneous tumors, the uterus being the most frequent site. One case of mammary carcinoma in a rabbit is reported by Marie and Aubertin (2), as seen by P. Masson. Another case is referred to as mentioned by Bashford (3). This is probably the tumor to which Polson refers in his paper (Case 8), for which a slide was sent him by J. A. Murray. Since Polson's report in 1927, the most comprehensive review is that of Gaston Fardeau in 1931 (4). Fardeau adds no new examples of breast carcinoma and introduces his chapter on mammary rabbit tumor with a brief statement that “up to the present” these have been rare. Ratcliffe (5), in a review of all tumors in wild birds and mammals dying in the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens from 1901 to 1932, mentioned no mammary tumor in the wild rabbit. Cutler (6), also, appears to have found no cases of breast tumors in his review of new growths in the rabbit. Koyama (7) recorded the presence of lactation in a rabbit with multiple adenomata of the uterus, and Watrin and Florentin (8) report the occurrence of lactation and enlarged mammary glands in a rabbit that had littered three years previously, and which showed in the enlarged, congested uterus, a deciduoma. Fifer (9) described various changes in the mammary glands of 90 rabbits, but makes no mention of the presence of breast tumors in any of them.