Laboratory Animal Pathology in Relation to Spontaneous Infections

In this chapter, a comprehensive guide for necropsying laboratory animals is given along with sequential illustrations of the different procedures. In this part also important parameters to be determined at the beginning of a necropsy and the necessary equipment for sampling of tissues are stated. The procedures for tissue sampling for histological preparation is followed by sections describing different techniques used for fixation, trimming, embedding, sectioning, and staining of tissues. The second half of this chapter is dedicated to the evaluation of tissue sections with special emphasis on infectious diseases including in situ identification of different infectious agents. In this part of this chapter also different pitfalls with regards to the presence of tissue-artifacts, which may be due to inappropriate handling of the animals ante- and/or postmortem, killing-procedures, tissue handling, fixation, processing and staining are covered. At the end of this chapter, different histochemical and molecular in situ identification techniques are addressed in both text and illustrations, which are followed by the histological demonstration of different examples of spontaneous infections in laboratory animals.