Case for Diagnosis

A 13 year old male Barbary ape (Macaca sylvana) from the National Zoological Park, Washington, D. C., died after a one-day illness characterized by lethargy and prostration. Although two other Barbary apes had died of an apparently similar cause within several weeks of this time, there were no clinical signs in 23 other nonhuman primates housed in the same colony. At necropsy this animal was icteric, and there were widespread petechiae and ecchymoses of visceral organs. Spirochetes could be demonstrated with Warthin- Starry silver stain in both kidney and liver tissue. Although leptospires were not isolated from the tissue because of freezing prior to processing, they were isolated from the liver and kidneys of the other two Barbary apes that died. By utilizing cross-agglutimation reactions it was found that the isolates cross- reacted with antiserums for serotype icterohaemorrhagiae. The local environment and the sequence of morbidity in the colony of apes seemed to favor an exogenous source of infection, most likely wild rodents known to be in the area.
Pub. in the Military Medicine, v137 n9 Sep 1972.