IMPACT OF EXPERIMENTAL GENITAL MYCOPLASMOSIS ON PREGNANCY OUTCOME IN SPRAGUE-DAWLEY RATS

Specific-pathogen-free (SPF) female Sprague-Dawley rats were infected by intravaginal inoculation with 3 x 10(7) CFU of Mycoplasma pulmonis X1048 in 0.1 ml of Frey's broth or with an equal volume of sterile Frey's broth. A minimum of 10 days postinfection, rats were bred to noninfected males. Rats were necropsied at days 11, 14, and 18 of gestation and within 24 h of parturition. Throughout pregnancy, at least 50% of rats remained infected in the lower genital tract. At parturition, the major site of colonization was the respiratory tract (P = 0.02). M. pulmonis was not isolated from any site of any control rat. Pregnancy outcome was adversely affected by infection with M. pulmonis. Infected rats had significantly smaller litter sizes at day 18 of gestation (P less-than-or-equal-to 0.01) and at term (P less-than-or-equal-to 0.004). No statistically significant differences among the gestational stages in infected rats were noted for litter size. Total litter weight is a reflection of individual pup weight and of the number of pups born. Therefore, it was obvious that infected rats would have a significantly lower (P less-than-or-equal-to 0.008) total litter weight than noninfected controls. However, when individual pup weights were considered, infected pups (n = 49) also had significantly lower (P < 0.0001 ) birth weights than did noninfected controls (n = 68). The incidence of an adverse pregnancy outcome at term (stillbirths, macerated fetuses, or resorptions) was higher (P less-than-or-equal-to 0.01) in infected rats than in noninfected control rats. No stillborn pups or macerated fetuses were observed in any control term rats (n = 5). All control rats had live-born pups. Three infected rats had no live-born offspring. Resorptions were more common in infected rats than in control rats (P less-than-or-equal-to 0.01). The mean number of resorptions per rat was greater in rats which went to term than in rats necropsied during gestation, indicating that the severity of disease was progressive. The rat is frequently the laboratory animal of choice for a wide variety of reproductive studies, and the experimental parameters that are most often measured (litter size, pup weight, and neonatal survival) were all adversely affected by genital mycoplasmosis. Genital mycoplasmosis is important as an animal model for the interaction of infectious agents and the host during pregnancy as well as in its own right as a confounding variable affecting research projects which use the rat as a model to study reproductive function and physiology.