Antemortem Diagnosis and Characterization of Nasal Intranuclear Coccidiosis in Sulawesi Tortoises (Indotestudo Forsteni)

Abstract

Intranuclear coccidia and Mycoplasma spp. were identified from the nasal cavity of 5 Sulawesi tortoises (Indotestudo forsteni) affected by chronic rhinosinusitis and oronasal fistulae. This study provides the first antemortem diagnosis of intranuclear coccidiosis in tortoises and the first cytomorphologic descriptions of this disease. Histopathologic and ultrastructural morphology of the intranuclear coccidia were identical to those previously described in tortoises. Nucleic acid sequence data of a 1715 base-pair fragment of the 18S small subunit rRNA gene identify this coccidian as a novel species.