The systemic granulomatous disease associated with consumption of Vicia villosa (Leg. Papilionoideae family) has been diagnosed in 5 cattle from 2005 to 2008. Affected cattle showed alopecia, crusted lesions on the skin, had itching, fever, decreased milk yield, anorexia and wasting. Average clinical course was 2 weeks. Three cattle died and two were euthanized in extremis. The main gross changes are alopecic and crusts in the skin, mainly on the face and neck. There also were multifocal to coalescent whitish nodules that infiltrated several organs, but especially lymph nodes, kidneys and hearth. Microscopic changes consisted of infiltration with lymphocytes, macrophages, epithelioid cells, giant multinucleated cells, eosinophils, and plasmocytes. Lymph nodes, kidneys, adrenal gland, spleen and liver from affected cattle showed varying degrees of granulomatous infiltration. Immunohistochemical procedures on samples from affected organs revealed that T-lymphocytes and macrophages/epithelioid cells/giant multinucleated cells were the main components of the inflammatory infiltrates, B-lymphocytes were only rarely seen within. The reduced numbers of cells marked by Ki-67 in the granulomatous lesions would indicate that cell proliferation was not responsible for the hypercellularity in the lesions and that rather the recruitment of macrophages and lymphocytes to the site inflammation probably accounted for the building up of the local cellular inflammatory infiltrate.
Poisonous plants; Vicia villosa; Leguminosae Papilionoideae; plant poisoning; systemic granulomatous disease; cattle; immunohistochemistry
