[Schistosoma reflexum in a female bovine fetus with synaptonemal complex abnormalities]

In this study we present mitotic- and meiotic investigations in an anatomical abnormal bovine fetus. The abnormality could be classified as "schistosoma reflexum", which was never described in fetuses in the literature. In the mitotical chromosome preparations from fibroblast cultures the examined fetus showed no chromosomal difference in comparison to the standard synaptonemal complexes (SC) which were prepared from the fetus at the age of 92 days post coitum. In the SCs from the abnormal fetus 43.75% of the investigated cells showed abnormalities such as "loop," "nonhomologue pairing" and "multivalency" in the pairing behavior of the chromosomes. In comparison, less than 5% of the cells in normal embryos showed such abnormalities.