Abstract
Severe subcutaneous emphysema was found throughout the body in cases of sudden death of calves in Yamagata, Iwate and Kanagawa prefectures, and Paeniclostridium sordellii was isolated from all cases. In this study, we compared the characteristics of 5 P. sordellii strains isolated from the subcutaneous emphysema cases and 25 P. sordellii strains from cattle and sheep with no emphysema. There were no clear differences in the prevalence of virulence genes (tcsL, tcsH and nanH ) between strains from the subcutaneous emphysema cases and those from the cases without emphysema. Moreover, strains from the subcutaneous emphysema cases belonged to mutually different lineages on the phylogenetic tree constructed on the basis of housekeeping gene sequences of the strains. In the antimicrobial susceptibility tests, it was found that all strains were highly susceptible to penicillin. This is the first report on subcutaneous emphysema in cattle in which P. sordellii was involved, and our results suggest that host and environmental factors are more important than bacterial factors in causing subcutaneous emphysema in animals.
