Five Fatal Cases of Primary Pulmonary Aspergillosis in Albino Asinara Donkey Foals

• This is the first case of primary pulmonary aspergillosis reported in this species.
• This report emphasizes the need to perform a necropsy on animals that died suddenly.
• This report could be a first step linking albinism and immunity in veterinary medicine.

Five albino Asinara donkey foals aged 20–30 days died suddenly, without any known history of illness, existing disease, or toxicant exposure. Necropsy revealed numerous white to yellow, discrete, irregular nodules with intralesional fungal hyphae in the lung. A large number of Aspergillus spp. were isolated from lung tissue via fungal culture, and biomolecular assays confirmed Aspergillus fumigatus. Pulmonary aspergillosis is an infrequent cause of pneumonia in the horse, and to the author's knowledge, it has never been reported in albino Asinara donkeys.