Corynebacterium equi Infections in Horses, 1958-1984: A Review of 131 Cases

Of 131 cases of Corynebacterium equi infection in horses submitted for necropsy to the Ontario Veterinary College or Veterinary Laboratory Services, OMAF, Guelph, Ontario from 1958 to 1984, 115 were diagnosed as suppurative pneumonia, and of these 55 had associated ulcerative enterocolitis. Only five animals had intestinal involvement without pulmonary lesions. The remaining 11 cases included arthritis/cellulitis, skin abscesses and submandibular lymphadenitis. While the lung, intestine and associated lymph nodes yielded C. equi most frequently, in 21% of cases C. equi was also cultured from parenchymatous organs (spleen, liver or kidney) or blood. Corynebacterium equi infection accounted for 10% of all foals submitted for postmortem examination and 45% of all foals with pneumonia. Affected foals were one to four months of age. Submissions occurred between the months of May and August with a peak during July. There was a significantly greater prevalence of C. equi infection in Standardbreds when compared with other breeds. Of foals in this study, 36% were from farms which had had other horses succumb to this disease. Of the foals with pulmonary involvement, 21% did not have fever or clinical signs referable to the respiratory or gastrointestinal systems, findings which indicated that a large percentage of cases were subclinical.     

Tenuous structures from disorderly growth processes

Colloidal aggregation and other random growth processes produce structures that behave differently from ordinary bulk matter. Much of this behavior can be described in terms of the invariance of the aggregates under changes of spatial length scale: they appear to be fractals. There are two types of basic mechanisms for producing fractal aggregates. Those in which aggregation proceeds cluster by cluster can be understood qualitatively in terms of a solvable schematic model. The diffusion-limited aggregation or deposition of individual particles to make a large cluster is not as well understood. It is closely related to several irreversible processes in other areas of physics, such as two-fluid displacement in porous materials and the dielectric breakdown of insulators. More generally, disorderly growth mechanisms provide structures having unique properties, many of which can be understood by using simple statistical principles.