HISTORY

A 6-year-old male Poodle dog was submitted for pathologic diagnosis caused by sudden death. The owner related the dog had an episode of emesis and diarrhea 5-day before. At necropsy, extensive digitiform pale areas in the left ventricle free wall were observed. The histopathologic findings included infiltrate of lymphocytes and macrophages, concomitant with severe presence of giant cells. The Groccot stain revealed severe presence of septated hyphaes with dicrotomous branching. The branches arise at an angle of approximately 45 degrees. Morphologically the hyphae structure corresponds to Aspergillus sp. A focal area of fungal infection was present in the kidney. The other organs were normal.

DISCUSSION

Myocardial infection by fungi is usually a secondary manifestation of the disseminated disease process associated with reduce defense or immunosuppressive therapy. Canine disseminated aspergillosis is an uncommon fatal infection characterized by the occurrence of granulomas particularly in the axial skeleton, kidneys, spleen, and lymph node, occurring most frequently in German shepherd dog breed. The clinical features are vertebral pain progressing to paralysis and paraplegia, or limb lameness with pronounced swelling and discharging sinus tract. Other nonspecific clinical signs included anorexia, weight loss, muscle wasting, pyrexia, weakness, lethargy and vomiting. Uveitis or endophthalmitis maybe clinically apparent some months before generalized illness develop. Disseminated aspergillosis in the dog has been described in others reports, but this infection never was described causing sudden death in clinically health dog.