Steatosis in donkey (Equus asinus). First report in Colombia

A case of steatosis in a, 15 years old gelding donkey (Equus asinus), from the town of San Antero (Cordoba, Colombia) is described. the donkey, showed a hard and painful thickened nuchal ligament, giving the impression of a double neck tumors. It was also found an edema in the indurated subcutaneous chest wall, abdomen and chest. It was also found hard lumps in the union of semimembranosus and semitendinosus muscles, which produced difficulty in the movility of the neck and coordinated translation. It is well known that this findings are due to a deficiency of selenium and vitamin E, giving them as diagnostic parameters for the presentation of this disease in horses, so we determined the enzyme activity of erythrocyte glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), yielding results very low. This condition is also known as yellow fat disease or steatitis in horses and produces degeneration of adipose tissue which is replaced by connective tissue and calcium deposits and may be associated with nutritional or dystrophic miodegeneration (white muscle disease). As far as we know this is the first report of steatosis in donkeys (Equus asinus) in Colombia.