Investigation of experimental Enterococcus faecalis amyloid arthropathy in chickens

In this study, 25 five-week-old layer ISA brown chickens were used. Twenty animals were inoculated intravenously with 0.1 ml of Enterococcus faecalis EFAA-01 strain at 10(9) CFU doses. Five chickens (control group) received 0.1 ml of 0.1% NaCl. After the treatment, the chickens were kept under observation for 10 weeks. Necropsy was performed on animals that died during the observation period and the rest of birds were sacrificed at the end of the experiment by cervical dislocation. Dullness, closing, of the eyes, loss of wing feathers, decrease in feed and water consumption, cachexia, and decreased growth rate were all noticed. The most outstanding clinical finding was bilateral or unilateral swelling of the femoro-tibial and tibio-metatarsal joints, which resulted in lameness. Macroscopically, thickenings associated with unilateral or bilateral amyloid accumulation were observed in femoro-tibial, tibio-metatarsal, and hip joints. Microscopically, amyloid accumulation was noticed in the vessel walls and the surrounding matrix, and the matrix surrounding the chondrocytes in the femoro-tibial tibio-metatarsal, and hip joints. At scanning electron microscope examination, amyloid substance in fibrillary form was observed.