Physiological peculiarities of dog’ blood erythrocytes in conditions of the Northern Black sea coast

Abstract

Erythrocyte microscopy is an important step in the study of blood smears, which gives the researcher a lot of information and under certain conditions allows one to make a reliable diagnosis. This article presents new scientific data on the physiological characteristics of erythrocytes in dogs, the variability of their size and shape depending on age, sex and season of the year. The experiment was performed on 147 clinically healthy dogs of different ages, breeds and genders. Blood smears were stained by the Romanowski-Gimse method and subjected to light microscopy with oil immersion. It was found that physiological anisocytosis occurs in 34% of dogs, and 86% are unknown poikilocytosis, 10% – moderate and only 4% – severe. If we analyze the changes in cell size, macrocytic anisocytosis was observed more often in the blood smear of dogs (in 19% of cases), slightly less – macrocytic (14%) and only in one case megalocytic anisocytosis was detected. Every third case of anisocytosis was reported in dogs under 6 months of age. In spring, changes in the size of erythrocytes were detected in 59% of cases (in 10 dogs out of 17), in summer and autumn – 17-18% and in winter in 8% of the studied animals. Only 60% of the studied dogs were found to have normochromia by laboratory analysis. Moreover, hypochromia is 4.7 times more common than hyperchromia. Hyperchromia in dogs was more often recorded in spring (18%), hypochromia in autumn and spring (41–45%), and polychromia in summer (24% of the total number of studied dogs). Inclusions in the erythrocytes of dogs were found in 32% of experimental blood smears, with 85% of cases being Jolie bodies, 7.5% – Kebot rings, 5.6% – Heinz bodies and 1.9% – pseudo-inclusions. Physiological poikilocytosis was detected in 47.6% of blood smears of dogs, out of which in 35.4% of samples there was a slight poikilocytosis, in 11.6% – moderate and up to 1% – severe. The ones that were more frequently encountered were target cells and stomatocytes (14% each), acanthocytes (11%), echinocytes (5%), dacrinocytes (4%), spherocytes (3%), keratocytes (2%), schistocytes (2%), crescent-shaped cells (1% of the total number of studied smears). Poikilocytosis in dogs is more common in spring (82% of smears), slightly less in summer (up to 35%) and autumn (21%).

Keywords

• dogs
• erythrocytes
• microscopy
• anisocytosis
• poikilocytosis