[Hematologic and histochemical changes in the bodies of sheep experimentally infected with listeriae].

Hematologic and histologic investigations were carried out on forty experimentally infected young ewes to which the infection was introduced through venous, intratracheal, and oral route as well as along the branches of nervus trigeminus parallel to the study of 3 control sheep, 12 albino mice, and other four young sheep that were injected with a water-extractive antigen obtained from Listeria. It was established that the leukocyte count rose in the first days following infection along with neutrophilia, lymphopenia, and monocytosis of a varying degree in the different animals, depending on the way of infection. Most indifferent with regard to the hematologic indices proved animals that were orally inoculated. With such animals there was also eosinophilia, which was lacking in the other experimental animals. Glycogen was predominantly found in the blood vessel walls, in the neutrophile leukocytes, the nervous tissue, and the necrotic foci, most likely in connection with the transportation of Listerial organisms and their toxic products. A drop up to the full disappearance of phospholipids was established as well as a rise of the ganglioside.