A case of stranded Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (<i>Tursiops aduncus</i>) with lobomycosis-like skin lesions in Kinko-wan, Kagoshima, Japan

Abstract

Lobomycosis is a chronic fungal disease caused by the etiologic agent, Lacazia loboi, in the skin and subcutaneous tissues in humans and dolphins in tropical and transitional tropical climates. An Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus) stranded in Kagoshima, Japan, had severe skin lesions characterized by granulomatous reactions and hyperkeratosis that were similar to those of the lobomycosis, but no fungal organism was observed in the skin lesion. In this paper, we report a stranded Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin with lobomycosis-like lesions based on pathological examinations in Japan.

Epidemiology of lobomycosis-like disease in bottlenose dolphins Tursiops spp. from South America and southern Africa

“…This agrees with observations in other Delphinidae populations around the world (Rotstein et al 2009, Van Bressem et al 2009a,b, Murdoch et al 2010, Esperón et al 2012). However, it is possible that different aetiological agents cause skin diseases resembling lobomycosis in dolphins (Tajima et al 2015), and further research is necessary. In the Southern Hemisphere, only 3 histological studies have demonstrated the presence of a fungus resembling Lacazia loboi in skin lesions sampled in 2 Tursiops truncatus from Laguna (Simões-Lopes et al 1993) and the Tramandaí Estuary ) and a third in a Sousa plumbea from South Africa (Lane et al 2014).…”

日本における水族館飼育下の雄のカマイルカにみられた クジラ型パラコクシジオイデス症（paracoccidioidomycosis ceti）を疑う一例

“…However, we detected no clear evidence of fungal or mycobacterial infection in the biopsied skin samples, other than typical chains of spherical budding-yeast-like cells, a cytological characteristic of PCM-C [2,7]. In addition, some previous cases of "lobomycosis-like disease" in cetaceans were described without proof of fungal elements, and the diagnostic basis for each was only the gross features of skin lesions [11,[18][19][20].…”

The Ecology of Non-Candida Yeasts and Dimorphic Fungi in Cetaceans: From Pathogenicity to Environmental and Global Health Implications

“…It has been recognized in various locations in the Americas, including Brazil [43,44], Costa Rica [45], Venezuela [46], and Surinam [47]. Importantly, outside of the Americas, paracoccidioidomycosis has been reported in France [35], Spain [48], Madagascar [49], South Africa [50], and Japan [51,52] (Table 1). Nonetheless, all human cases in nonendemic countries have been imported.…”

“…Moreover, both captive and wild dolphins are susceptible to this infection, and serological studies have demonstrated that the seroprevalence against P. ceti in captive dolphins is 61.0%, while that in wild Dall's porpoises is 26.9% [53]. Evidence of paracoccidioidomycosis has been reported in bottlenose dolphins (T. truncatus) in the West Atlantic [43,46,[54][55][56], in the East Atlantic [35], and in the Eastern Pacific [45,57], and in Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus), both in the Indian Ocean [49] and in the Western Pacific [52,58]. Furthermore, there have been cases in Indian Ocean humpback dolphins (Sousa plumbea), in Australian snubfin dolphins (Orcaella heinsohni), and in Guiana dolphins (Sotalia guianensis) in the Western Atlantic [50,59] (Table 1).…”

“…Commonly impacted anatomical areas include the dorsal cranial surface, anterior dorsum, and fins [42,51,56,58,60,61]. Pathological features include acanthosis, hyperkeratosis, hyperpigmentation, profound fibrosis [42,52,58], lymphohystiocytic infiltration, and microabscesses replete with yeast-like cells connected by short and thin isthmuses [60].…”