Two rabbits died with the following post mortem findings:
Frothy discharge from nose, Haemorrhagic Tracheitis, Pulmonary oedema, Consolidation of lungs,Diffuse and patchy necrosis of liver, Pin point haemorrhages in heart, Pericardial effusion, Peritoneal effusion, Petechiae in kidney, Haemorrhage in urinary bladder, Haemorrhagic enteritis
Organ culture revealed highly mucoid pink coloured colonies on Mac Conkey agar. On gram staining, Gram negative bacilli were observed. So P. multocida is ruled out and colony morphology suggests Klebsiella. I want to go for further characterization of the bacterium. But is Klebsiella that pathogenic and prevalent in rabbits?
Although Klebsiella are common and are rarely implicated as causing serious disease in rabbits, reports of them causing siginificant infections are available:
Outbreak of Klebsiella oxytoca enterocolitis on a rabbit farm in Hungary The Veterinary Record 2011;168:9 243;
Klebsiella pneumoniae infection in Italian rabbits, M. Coletti et al., Veterinary Record 2001;149:20 626-627doi:10.1136/vr.149.20.626
@ Derek Spielman
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your response, I got those articles.....but the pathological gross lesions we got are different from the lesions listed in the above mentioned articles. We did the mouse pathogenicity and the isolate was found to be pathogenic. We will do the biochemical characterization and histopathology of the organ samples in the coming days. The organism seems to be K. pneumoniae rather than K. oxytoca. I will update after getting the results.
Sometime the pathological gross lesion present in organs not produced from single organism but from more than organism. May be some pathological lesion related to another bacteria or viruses. For examples in Camels there are different pathological lesions were recorded in apparently healthy camels and no bacteria were isolated from the lungs which mean may be another agents may be present either parasitic, viral, or toxic agents.
@ Gamal Wareth
In our case, we got the Klebsiella organisms in pure culture. No other bacteria were present. The presence of virus I am not sure about. The animal showed clinical signs suggestive of respiratory as well as systemic infection. Please see the attached photograph of histo-pathology of lung sections.
I appreciate your hisopathology pictutre but to some extend it is of low quality, Please try to see the picture with high magnification power and look for lymphocytic ceel aggregation. I suspect there is some in the picture but I am not sure because the quality of the picture. If you find lymphocytic aggregation it will direct you to viral infection because the predominant inflamatory cells in viral infection is lymphocyte,in bacterial infection is neutrophiles and in parasitic infestation is esinophiles.
Please lookfor the mortality rates and water and food because some of lesions you mentioned also are common in toxeamia.
@Gamal Wareth: only two animals died among a group of 30 rabbits, all other animals which were given same feed and water did not show any kind of signs of disease.
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