Connie Gebhart University of Minnesota

Publish Date: April 19, 2012

Proliferative enteropathy (ileitis) is an infectious enteric disease characterized by thickening of the mucosa of the intestine due to hyperplasia of the crypt enterocytes. The disease in pigs includes several acute and chronic clinical manifestations, including proliferative hemorrhagic enteropathy and acute hemorrhagic diarrhea with sudden death of pigs close to market age, and porcine intestinal adenomatosis, a chronic mild diarrhea with reduced performance of growing pigs. Other terms used to describe this disease include necrotic enteritis, regional or terminal ileitis, garden-hose gut, and subclinical ileitis. All forms of the disease have in common the presence of proliferating crypt epithelial cells caused by an obligately intracellular bac- terium, Lawsonia intracellularis. Proliferative enteropathy has been reported in various other animal species, including hamsters, horses, ferrets, foxes, rabbits, deer, some avian species, and non-human primates.