Molecular epidemiology of antimicrobial resistance in veterinary medicine: where do we go?

Molecular epidemiology allows us to trace specific microorganisms and mobile genetic elements and to assess their epidemiological and evolutionary relationships. Examples of molecular epidemiology investigations in veterinary hospitals are discussed. They demonstrate the great similarities with the situation in human medicine and the potential usefulness of molecular epidemiology in our fight against antimicrobial resistance and nosocomial infections in veterinary hospitals. A broad knowledge of the diversity of antimicrobial resistance determinants in some major groups of pathogens and commensals from animals such as Enterobacteriaceae, Pasteurellaceae, enterococci and staphylococci is emerging. However, there are important gaps in this knowledge, which are discussed here. Many more molecular epidemiology studies will be necessary to understand and follow the evolution of the problem in veterinary medicine and agriculture on a global scale. To be able to build useful surveillance programs and reliable epidemiological models, and to identify critical intervention points, we need to improve our understanding of antimicrobial resistance at the animal and farm levels. Studies assessing the dynamics of bacterial populations and of resistance determinants at these levels are desperately needed. Understanding the relationships between antimicrobial resistance, colonization factors, and virulence also represents a major issue for which molecular epidemiology investigations will be needed.     

Modulating immune responses with dendritic cells: an attainable goal in veterinary medicine?

Dendritic cells (DCs) are antigen presenting cells that potently modulate immune responses with varying outcomes depending on the DC sub-population involved. To understand how DC sub-types arise, it is necessary to determine which factors influence their differentiation. At least three major sub-populations of DCs have been described in mice: CD4+/CD8- "myeloid" DCs, CD4-/CD8+ "lymphoid" DCs and Langerhans cell-derived DCs. Whilst somewhat comparable populations have been described in man, in most other species very little is known. The identification of cytokines which stimulate proliferation of DC precursors, and the observation that the cytokine environment influences the phenotype and the function of the DCs that subsequently develop, has provided a useful tool for evaluating these rare cells. We describe the influence of cytokines on the phenotype of DCs generated in the rat. Using bone marrow cells as the source of precursors we generated "myeloid-type" DCs from the adherent population using granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF), IL-4 and Flt-3L or "lymphoid-type" DCs from the non-adherent population using cytokines which included IL-7, IL-3, SCF and TNFalpha. In order to facilitate similar approaches to the study of equine DCs we have identified the nucleotide sequence encoding GM-CSF from the m-RNA of equine PBMC stimulated with Concanavalin A, amplified the cDNA by PCR and cloned it in eukaryotic and prokaryotic expression vectors. We report on the structure and function of this molecule.