Death of a neonatal lamb due to Clostridium perfringens type B in New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Case history and clinical findings: A flock of 20 sheep was kept within three paddocks on a single property. None of the animals in the flock had been vaccinated against any disease for at least three years. Abdominal bloating and haemorrhagic diarrhoea were observed in Lamb 1 at 24 hours-of-age. The lamb subsequently died within an hour of the onset of clinical signs. Lamb 2 was 3-days-old when observed to be recumbent with opisthotonus. The lamb was treated with dextrose, vitamins B1 and B12, and penicillin G, but died 4 hours later.

Pathological findings: Examination of Lamb 1 revealed markedly increased gas within the peritoneum and within dilated loops of intestine. The intestines were dark red and contained large quantities of haemorrhagic fluid. Histology of the intestines revealed peracute mucosal necrosis with minimal accompanying inflammation. The intestinal lumen contained cell debris, haemorrhage, and myriad large Gram-positive bacilli. The intestines of Lamb 2 did not appear bloated or reddened. However, multiple fibrin clots were visible within the pericardial sac. Histopathological examination revealed small foci of necrosis within the mucosa of the distal intestine. The necrotic foci were often associated with large numbers of large Gram-positive bacilli.

Immunohistochemsitry and molecular biology: Intestinal samples from Lamb 1 were processed for Clostridium perfringens immunohistochemistry, which revealed large numbers of intralesional, positively immunostained rods. Fragments corresponding to the expected sizes for genes encoding alpha, beta, and epsilon C. perfringens typing toxins were amplified by PCR from DNA extracted from formalin-fixed sections of intestine.

Diagnosis: Lamb dysentery due to C. perfringens type B.

Clinical relevance: C. perfringens bacteria have a worldwide distribution, but disease due to C. perfringens type B has only been diagnosed in a small number of countries and has never been reported in New Zealand or Australia. C. perfringens type B produce both beta toxin and epsilon toxins, therefore both haemorrhagic enteritis and systemic vascular damage can develop. As many animals are exposed to C. perfringens without developing disease, there must be additional unknown factors that resulted in disease in these particular sheep. Vaccines that specifically protect against C. perfringens type B are available and may be recommended for use in smaller non-commercial flocks, as in the present case.     

Nucleotide sequence of hog cholera virus RNA: properties of the polyprotein encoded by the open reading frame spanning the viral genomic RNA

Hog cholera virus RNA was cloned and sequenced. A single major open reading frame (ORF), encoding an amino acid sequence of 3898 residues, was found in the second reading frame of the sequence of one of the cDNA strands. We demonstrated that the ORF spans the length of the viral sense RNA, which implies that it is translated into a precursor polyprotein. Several properties of this polyprotein, like hydrophobicity, position of putative protease cleavage sites, distribution of N-linked glycosylation sites, distribution of cysteines and distribution of acidic and basic residues are described and discussed.     

国有苗圃所有制结构调整之我见

所有制结构的调整是国有苗圃发展壮大的出路所在.笔者从必要性,战略方向,基本途径等三个方面阐述了看法.     

3种阔叶树育苗技术及苗木生长规律研究初探

通过对闽楠，蓝果树，东京野茉莉的育苗试验，研究苗木生长规律，掌握生理生物学特性。     

Analysis of embedded gas detection system based on nano-porphyrin arrays

In view of the necessity of gas detection in environment, an embedded gas detection system is designed based on the basic principles of chromatography change of chemical reaction between nano-porphyrin arrays and micro-gas, which takes ARM9 S3C2440A as the core and nano-porphyrin array as the sensors. The overall program, the circuit organization and control software of the main function module such as spectrum signal acquisition, processing and monitoring are presented. With energy conservation differential equation, the control model of temperature and flow rate in the sample chamber is established, which can precisely control the detection conditions of chemical sensors. Some typical trace gases such as ammonia, enanthaldehyde, cyclohexane and hexanal are tested by the system, and the results show that the system can achieve rapid and accurate detection of trace volatile gas.     

阔叶红松林山杨伐根分解过程中真菌动态研究

山杨是长白山阔叶红松林中的常见阔叶树种,择伐后的伐根很多.山杨伐根在多种真菌的作用下逐渐分解,不断地向周围释放养分,构成保证森林生态系统稳定循环的一个重要环节.随分解的不断进行,山杨伐根上的真菌的种类和数量都呈现出一定的变化趋势.真菌数量高峰出现在伐后的第5年,而种类高峰则出现在伐后的第7年.这一时间上的交错现象是由真菌的不同分解能力引起的.分解能力强的主要分解菌将难于分解的木质素、纤维素等分解为易于利用的小分子物质,为其他真菌提供了营养来源,便于其他真菌的定殖.另外,伐根上的真菌数量还与伐根桩径呈正相关关系.     

Lelystad virus, the cause of porcine epidemic abortion and respiratory syndrome: a review of mystery swine disease research at Lelystad.

This paper reviews the laboratory investigations that led us to isolate the Lelystad virus and demonstrate that this virus causes mystery swine disease. We describe: 1) isolating the virus from the disease; 2) characterizing the virus as a new enveloped RNA virus; 3) reproducing the disease experimentally with the isolated Lelystad virus; 4) isolating the virus from the experimentally induced disease.     

CLINICAL,DIAGNOSTIC, AND PATHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF 2 CASES OF METASTATIC IRIDOPHOROMA IN A VEILED CHAMELEON (CHAMAELEO CALYPTRATUS) AND A RED-BARRED DRAGON (CTENOPHORUS VADNAPPA)

Iridophores are iridescent cutaneous pigment cells found in reptiles, fish, and amphibians. Neoplasms of iridophores are rarely reported, and little is known about their behaviour, metastatic potential, and prognostic indicators. This paper reports details of the clinical course and pathological findings of metastatic iridophoroma in a veiled chameleon (Chamaeleo calyptratus) and red-barred dragon (Ctenophorus vadnappa). The veiled chameleon presented with a subcutaneous mass on the right lateral elbow and was diagnosed as an iridophoroma on fine needle aspiration. It was otherwise clinically normal. Within 35 days of excision, multiple secondary skin masses developed which were often non-pigmented and required microscopic examination to identify them as iridophoroma metastases. There were in total 54 days between the first detection of the primary mass and end stage, extensive cutaneous and visceral metastatic disease, and there had been no detectable primary mass during routine clinical examination 128 days prior to death. The red-barred dragon presented with a white sub-mandibular mass. While undergoing an excisional biopsy the animal expired, post-mortem examination revealed a cutaneous malignant iridophoroma with tumour cell clusters seen in pulmonary arterial vessels, suggesting that surgical handling of iridophoroma could precipitate the release of circulating tumour cell clusters. This is the first iridophoroma described in a red-barred dragon and the second report of a malignant iridophoroma in a veiled chameleon. Timely detection and careful excision of lizard iridophoroma may be an important factor in clinical outcome.     

A fast quantitative identification algorithm of colorimetric visual-sensor-array based on basic units matching

There are many difficulties to process a colorimetric visual-sensor-array by traditional processing methods, such as complicated manual analysis due to many data and hard to finish varieties and concentrations identification simultaneously, etc. In view of colorimetric-sensor-array’s same location response to the same gas, a fast quantitative identification algorithm of colorimetric visual-sensor-array based on basic units matching which can solve these problems is proposed. First, denoising and feature extraction are processed by setting experienced threshold to reduce redundancies and lessen manual analysis. Second, a creative qualitative analysis method based on basic units is put forward, which not only reduces computation, but also increases efficiency and precision. Finally, a ANFIS of NH3 concentration recognition utilizing advantages of fuzzy logic and neural network is used to distinguish low concentration NH3. The advantage of this algorithm is that varieties and concentrations of different gases could be detected successively, solving the problem of recognition errors caused by characteristic data infection when varieties and concentrations of different gases are detected simultaneously.The results of template matching based on basic units show that the classification accuracy of NH3, Cl2 and SO2 are 100%. The low concentration NH3 classification accuracy is also very high after species identification with measurement errors below 5%.