The influence of canine brucellosis on morphofunctional features of epididymal spermatozoa: case report

Abstract

The present work reports a clinical case of a mongrel dog, with serological diagnosis of brucellosis, from which epididymal sperm analysis was performed. Sperm samples were collected from different segments of the epididymis (tail, corpus, and caput). Sperm samples were evaluated for computer-assisted motility analysis (CASA), spermatic morphology, mitochondrial activity and sperm plasmatic membrane and acrosomal integrity. Changes in sperm movement patterns were found (progressive motility, percentage of rapid sperm, percentage of rapid velocity, average pathway, curvilinear velocity, velocity straight line, amplitude of lateral head displacement, straightness and linearity), increase of total morphological defects (51%) and absence of sperm mitochondrial activity (20%) were verified, especially for cauda epididymides. We highlight that such changes can contribute to clinical diagnosis of Brucellosis in dogs and to the use of epididymal sperm in reproductive biotechnologies. Canine brucellosis is a zoonotic, chronic, infectious disease, which affects domestic and wild canids (Corrente et al., 2010).