Case report: Actinomycosis in a West African dwarf goat in Nigeria

Abstract

Actinomycosis, also called Lumpy jaw is a chronic, progressive, indurated, granulomatous, suppurative abscess that most frequently involves the mandible, the maxillae or other bony tissues in the head. It is a sporadic but common disease in cattle, occasional in pigs and horses and rarely in goats (Radostits et al., 2007). Members of the genus Actinomyces are Gram positive, non-acid fast, non-spore forming rods (Songer and Post, 2005) that form a mycelium of branching filaments that fragment into irregular-sized rods (Blood et al., 2007). The species that commonly cause disease in domestic animals include A. bovis, A. hordeovulneris, A. hyovaginalis, A. israelii, A. naeslundii, A. suis, A. viscosus and Arcanobacterium pyogenes (Songer and Post, 2005). Actinomyces bovis is a common inhabitant of the bovine mouth and infection is presumed to occur through wounds to the buccal mucosa caused by sharp pieces of feed or foreign material. Infection may also occur through dental alveoli, and may account for the more common occurrence of the disease in young cattle when the teeth are erupting (Radostits et al., 2007). Actinomyces viscosus causes periodontal disease and subgingival plaques in hamsters fed a high carbohydrate diet, and also abscessation in dogs (Timoney et al., 1988) in which it is an opportunistic infection (Blood et al., 2007). The present report describes a case of actinomycosis due to A. viscosus involving a doe in a herd of 42 West African Dwarf (WAD) goats kept intensively at the Teaching and Research Farm, University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria.