Uncommon co-infection due to Moniezia expansa and Moniezia benedeni in young goats from Romania: morphological and histopathological analysis.

Abstract

Digestive parasitoses negatively affect the goat's health, the gain weight of the kids, the efficiency of food conversion, fertility, and productivity, causing important economic losses. This investigation was carried out on a group of goats, Carpathian breed, in the hill area of Tg. Frumos-Iași, to specify the etiology of the acute digestive syndrome, triggered towards the end of the pasturing season, in the young goats. In this context, four sick animals, aged 6-8 months, were slaughtered. Morphological, pathological, and parasitological examination of dissected animals was conducted. Multiple tapeworms belonging to Moniezia expansa and Moniezia benedeni species were found. From the duodenum, jejunum, ileum, fragments were taken for the histopathological processing. The identification of the tapeworm species was carried out through morphological differentiation. The prevalence of tapeworm infection in the examined animals was 100% of which M. expansa was 56.10% and M. benedeni was 43.90%. The average infection intensity was 10.25 tapeworms/animal. The average intensity of infection with M. expansa was 7.5 tapeworms/ animal, and with M. benedeni it was 4.5 tapeworms/animal. Severe pathological lesions in the small intestine such as occlusion, intestinal obstruction, catarrhal inflammation, total atrophy of intestinal villi, ulcerations were produced by the parasites, which led to the clinical expression of the disease and to direct economic losses. The infection with the Moniezia benedeni species is noticed for the first time in Romania, in young goats.