Abdominal Cysticercosis in a Cynomolgus Monkey

Cysticercus tenuicollis, the larval form of Taenia hydatigena, was observed in a 5-year-old male cynomolgus monkey used in a toxicity study for a safety assessment of a pharmaceutical. The animal was born and raised in a primate colony in China. A pale yellow cyst filled with more than 100ml of pale yellow fluid was found in the abdominal cavity in the autopsy. The cyst was found attached to the greater omentum, and it was double layered. Histopathologically, the outer layer was a part of the greater omentum, and the inner layer was the bladder wall of a cysticercus with a well developed scolex. A partial sequence of mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenase subunit 1 showed a high homology to the same region of Taenia hydatigena (1.5-3.3%).