Natural infection by Trypanosoma cruzi in a dog from Bahia state - northeast of Brazil

Silva, Kaíque Pires Moura daRodrigues, Valquíria Tatiele da SilvaRibeiro Junior, Gilmar José da SilvaCarneiro, Ianei de OliveiraGomes Júnior, Deusdete ConceiçãoVieira, Layze Cilmara Alves da Silva

Background: Chagas Disease (CD) is a parasitic anthropozoonosis caused by the Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi), a protozoan transmitted by insects from the Reduviidae family. Several species of wild and domestic animals, humans included, are susceptible, developing acute clinical signals (myocarditis and cardiac arrhythmias) or chronic signals (drop on the performance and syncope) of the disease. In Brazil, the disease in dogs shows variable indexes of occurrence. The present paper describes the natural infection by T. cruzi in a canine living in the city of Barra, in the state of Bahia, Brazil, a region classified as high risk of vulnerability for the CD in the northeast of Brazil. Case: A 9-year-old male dog, non-specific breed, was referred to the clinic the Veterinary Clinic for Small Animals, at the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital), at the Federal University of the West of Bahia. Its owner reported the presence of bloody secretion in the penile region. During the physical exam it was possible to observe an increase in the volume of the penis base. All of the animal’s physiological parameters were within normal levels. Blood samples and cytological laminas from the lesioned area were collected and sent to the Laboratory of Veterinary Clinical Pathology in the same institution. The cytological exam showed monomorphic population of great round cells with a round nucleus, condensed chromatin and one to two prominent nucleolus, abundant and slightly basophilic cytoplasm, with multiple stippled vacuoles, thus confirming a Transmissible venereal tumor (TVT) case. With the blood exam one observed a thrombocytopenia, neutrophilia with a deviation on the left and the presence of a trypomastigote form of Trypanosoma sp. in the blood smears...(AU)

1. dogs
2. reservoir
3. protozoan
4. Chagas Disease