Renal disease in the pigtailed macaque (Macaca nemestrina)

Spontaneous renal disease in the pigtailed macaque was evaluated in a prospective study of 20 apparently healthy monkeys that were killed and a retrospective study of 674 monkeys that died of spontaneous disease. Many apparently normal pigtailed macaques have a mesangioproliferative glomerulonephritis of slight to moderate severity. Deposition of immunoglobulin, particularly IgM, was common in renal glomeruli and did not seem to correlate with renal disease. Glomerulonephritis was found in 14% of the adult monkeys that died of spontaneous disease; in 4.2% it was severe enough to have caused renal failure. Tubular nephrosis was the most common renal lesion (22.6% of adults) and was usually a nephrotoxicity resulting from treatment of diarrhea with nephrotoxic antibiotics. Other lesions found were incidental or were secondary to disease processes in other organs. Pigtailed macaques that have been in our colony at least six months have a higher incidence of renal disease than is reported elsewhere in Old World monkeys.