Histopathology of the organs from cattle with leptospirosis

Abstract

Leptospirosis is one of the neglected diseases distributed worldwide. Leptospirosis causes severe infection in cattle. A total of four male cattle were found dead in the cowshed during July 2019-April 2020. The necropsy procedure was conducted, and various macroscopic lesions were identified. Further, several fresh and fixed specimens were collected and transported to the laboratory for ELISA and histopathology. The qualitative ELISA showed that all kidney samples were positive against Leptospira IgG. The histopathology showed that the lung specimens were suffering from pneumonia (3/4), the liver congestion (2/4), liver fatty degeneration (1/4), and chronic nephritis and glomerulonephritis (4/4). Based on the Gram staining, all kidney samples showed the appearance of slender form bacteria that may belong to Leptospira sp in the lumen of tubules. All dead cattle showed moderate and minimal expression of CD4+ and CD8+ in the lung and liver concomitantly. In contrast, there is no expression of CD4+, and a high expression of CD8+ was observed from the kidneys. This study demonstrated that leptospirosis in cattle impacts several organs with severe manifestation occurs on the kidneys.