Pathomorphological changes in testes in cats with hemobartonellosis

The description of pathomorphological changes in testes of the cats which died from hemobartonellosis is presented in the study. Hemobartonellosis, or infectious anemia of cats, is characterized by the following clinical signs: weak-ness, loss of body weight, intermittent fever, ane-mia or icterus of the outer mucous membranes, hyperplasia of the lymph nodes and spleen, dystro-phy of parenchymal organs. The causative agents of this disease are Mycoplasma haemofelis micro-organisms (Haemobartonella felis, Eperythrozoon felis) localized on the surface or in the owner's erythrocytes. They contribute to the reduction of red blood cells and hemoglobin in blood, which in turn leads to the development of tissue hypoxia, diathe-sis hemorrhages and degeneration of parenchymal organs. One of the main problems in the diagnosis of hemobartonellosis is the variety of clinical mani-festations of this disease in cats, it is also often im-possible to detect pathogen in peripheral blood. Until the end, the mechanism of transfer of patho-gen, pathogenesis and influence on reproductive system has not been studied yet. The cats (n = 9, aged from 1.5 to 5 years) who fell from hemobartonellosis became the object of the re-search. In blood smears animals were found hemotropic mycoplasmas. Blood smears were stained using Romanovsky-Giemsa method and the method of staining blood smears (RF patent No. 2304776). For histologic studies the pieces of testes were taken from each animal. The material was fixed in 10% neutral formalin for 3-5 days and washed for 24 hours in running water, conducted through ethyl alcohol of increasing concentration (60, 70, 80, 96, 100), and poured into paraffin.. Af-ter that, according to the standard method, sections with the thickness of 5-8 μm were prepared by means of microtome MPS-P. Histological prepara-tions were photographed using imaging complex based on Olympus 2000. The sections were stained with hemothoxylin and eosin. Pathological changes in the testes of cats with various forms of hemobartonellosis have been revealed.