Background:
Perinatal mortality in
sheep is determined by
death between 60 days of
gestation and 28 days
postpartum. The
starvation /
hypothermia complex was characterized by lambs that walked, but did not feed. Polioencephalomalacia (PEM) is a descriptive term that indicates the morphological
diagnosis for
necrosis with softening of the
gray matter in the
brain. There are no data available in the
literature relating PEM to the
starvation /
hypoglycemia /
hypothermia complex in small
ruminants. Thus, the objective of this
work is to
report a case of polyioencephalomalacia related to the
starvation /
hypoglycemia /
hypothermia and
septicemia complex in a
newborn sheep. Case A 5-day-old
sheep female mixed
race (Dorper x Santa Inês), 3.0 kg, from a rural property in the Federal District, was sent to the
Veterinary Pathology Laboratory of the
University of Brasília, for a necropsy. Organ fragments were collected and fixed in a 10 % buffered
formalin solution, routinely processed for
histology and stained with
Hematoxylin and
Eosin (HE). Additionally, swabs from the
meninges, eyeballs and navels were collected for
bacteriology. The
animal came from
twin pregnancies and was weak since
birth. With three days of
life, it presented
apathy, weakness, difficulty in
breastfeeding, difficulty in
walking, and decubitus in a
self-
auscultation position. After 2 days of evolution the lamb died. Macroscopically, eyeball opacity, omphalophlebitis and congested
brain were observed. Microscopically in the
frontal cortex, the leptomeninge was markedly thickened by a large number of
neutrophils and, to a lesser extent,
macrophages,
lymphocytes and plasmocytes, associated with aggregates of free eosinophilic rods or in the
cytoplasm of
macrophages. In the underlying gray substance, the neurópilo was observed containing...