Collagenofibrotic Glomerulopathy in a Young Cat

First case of a natural infection in a domestic cat (Felis catus) with the canid heart worm Angiostrongylus vasorum

“…The cause for the kidney changes is not clear: the only description of a cat with renal glomerular fibrosis postulated a production of collagen type III through activated mesangial cells (Nakamura et al, 1996). In our case, glomerular changes resulted in proteinuria and azotaemia (Hilbe et al, 2019) and did not give evidence for a correlation with the A. vasorum infection. Inflammatory lung lesions near vessels and vascular thrombi with nematode sections within arterial vessels are comparable with observations made in dogs infected with A. vasorum.…”

“…Aelurostrongylus abstrusus and A. vasorum are both gastropod transmitted nematodes and they may share the same intermediate hosts within overlapping areas, as it has been observed for Switzerland Hilbe et al, 2019;Lurati et al, 2015). Especially chronic A. abstrusus infected cats become non-patent over time (Ribeiro and Lima Dos Santos, 2001) and therefore do not excrete L1 in the faeces that are useful for diagnostics.…”