Abstract. Case records of 21 horses that had acute illness after eating baled alfalfa hay containing dead striped blister beetles were reviewed. Tissue sections from 14 of the horses were examined; sections from two normal horses and several others with unrelated diseases were used for comparison.Clinical illness was characterized by abdominal pain, fever, depression, frequent urination, shock and, occasionally, synchronous diaphragmatic flutter. Laboratory findings were hemoconcentration, neutrophilic leukocytosis, hypocalcemia, hematuria and low urine specific gravity. Major morphologic changes were sloughing of the stratified squamous epithelium of the stomach, hemorrhage and ulceration in the urinary bladder, enterocolitis and myocardial necrosis. Five horses with experimental poisoning had lesions and clinical signs similar to those of the natural disease.Acute disturbance of both the gastrointestinal and urinary tracts, and the stomach and bladder lesions, were regarded as sufficiently suggestive of blister beetle poisoning to be useful in differential diagnosis, but no pathognomonic lesions were found. Therefore, striped blister beetles should be sought in hay fed to affected horses if blister beetle poisoning is suspected.Poisoning of horses from ingestion of dead striped blister beetles (Epicauta) was first reported from Tennessee in 1963 [20]. The disease has since been recognized in Texas and Oklahoma [6,10,25,29].The hemolymph of blister beetles contains cantharidin [30], a stable white crystalline substance only slightly soluble in water but soluble in organic solvents [24,31,33]. It is an extremely potent irritant to many tissues and causes acantholysis and formation of intraepidermal vesicles when applied topically [8,12,13,15,17,[32][33][34]. It is absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract and skin and is excreted by the kidney [33]. The biochemical basis of the action of cantharidin has been the subject oflimited investigations but remains unknown [3-5, 8, 12-15,32; 33].Reported clinical features of blister beetle poisoning in horses are shock, fever, depression, abdominal pain, frequent urination, oral ulcers, and episodes of collapse [6,20,25,29]. Postmortem findings have been only briefly described.Clinical evidence of cantharidin poisoning in man includes excoriations in the mouth and pharynx, hematemesis, abdominal pain, lumbar and suprapubic pain, hematuria, frequent painful urination, oliguria or anuria, and shock [1,7,9,11,16,18,21,22,28,36,37]. Reported morphologic changes are mucosal sloughing in the 18
Recognition of hepatozoonosis in four dogs that lived in Oklahoma their entire lifetimes documents expansion of the previously recognized endemic area of the disease. Salient clinical features are fever, marked neutrophilic leukocytosis, periosteal new bone proliferation, myalgia, weakness, muscle and generalized wasting, and lack of response to treatment. Transient, large-bowel diarrhea may be observed. Each of the four cases had signs compatible with chronic, persistent inflammatory disease that were poorly and ultimately nonresponsive to antimicrobial treatment. Diagnosis was confirmed in one case by recognition of Hepatozoon gamonts in peripheral blood leukocytes. Encysted forms of the organism were present in skeletal muscle and other tissues of each case.
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