Estimating Lyme disease risk using pet dogs as sentinels

The reported number of cases of Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, is thought to have increased in the UK over the past decade, but consistent surveillance data are lacking. Here the prevalence of B. burgdorferi in ticks attached to pet dogs was examined - using them as sentinels for human disease risk. Dogs give a good indication of the exposure of their human owners to infected ticks, since they largely share the same environment and visit the same outdoor areas. PCR was used to test 739 tick samples collected from 3534 dogs selected at random as they visited veterinary practices over a period of six months. Overall, the prevalence of infected ticks on all dogs was 0.5% giving an estimated 481 infected ticks per 100,000 dogs. The data suggest that the prevalence of Borrelia in the UK tick population is considerably higher than most recent estimates indicate.     

Ultrasonographic identification of vascular invasion by adrenal tumors in dogs

Adrenalectomy is the treatment of choice for adrenal tumors that are producing adverse clinical signs. Surgical planning prior to adrenalectomy is aided by identifying tumors with invasion into adjacent vessels or the presence of a tumor thrombus extending into the caudal vena cava. In this paper, we evaluated the sensitivity and specificity of ultrasound in determining if vascular invasion or tumor thrombus is present. Thirty-four dogs with 36 adrenal tumors were reviewed retrospectively. Overall, 36% of tumors had vascular invasion. Abdominal ultrasound was 100% sensitive and 96% specific in identifying the presence of a tumor thrombus in the caudal vena cava. The sensitivity and specificity was 76% and 96%, respectively, when all forms of vascular invasion were evaluated and included patients with vascular wall invasion without concurrent thrombus. Abdominal ultrasound is a good screening tool for identifying vascular invasion or tumor thrombus associated with adrenal tumors in dogs.     

Investigating the persistence of accuracy of genomic predictions over time in broilers

Accuracy of genomic predictions is an important component of the selection response. The objectives of this research were: 1) to investigate trends for prediction accuracies over time in a broiler population of accumulated phenotypes, genotypes, and pedigrees and 2) to test if data from distant generations are useful to maintain prediction accuracies in selection candidates. The data contained 820K phenotypes for a growth trait (GT), 200K for two feed efficiency traits (FE1 and FE2), and 42K for a carcass yield trait (CY). The pedigree included 1,252,619 birds hatched over 7 years, of which 154,318 from the last 4 years were genotyped. Training populations were constructed adding 1 year of data sequentially, persistency of accuracy over time was evaluated using predictions from birds hatched in the three generations following or in the years after the training populations. In the first generation, before genotypes became available for the training populations (first 3 years of data), accuracies remained almost stable with successive additions of phenotypes and pedigree to the accumulated dataset. The inclusion of 1 year of genotypes in addition to 4 years of phenotypes and pedigree in the training population led to increases in accuracy of 54% for GT, 76% for FE1, 110% for CY, and 38% for FE2; on average, 74% of the increase was due to genomics. Prediction accuracies declined faster without than with genomic information in the training populations. When genotypes were unavailable, the average decline in prediction accuracy across traits was 41% from the first to the second generation of validation, and 51% from the second to the third generation of validation. When genotypes were available, the average decline across traits was 14% from the first to the second generation of validation, and 3% from the second to the third generation of validation. Prediction accuracies in the last three generations were the same when the training population included 5 or 2 years of data, and a decrease of ~7% was observed when the training population included only 1 year of data. Training sets including genomic information provided an increase in accuracy and persistence of genomic predictions compared with training sets without genomic data. The two most recent years of pedigree, phenotypic, and genomic data were sufficient to maintain prediction accuracies in selection candidates. Similar conclusions were obtained using validation populations per year.     

Use of real-time PCR to detect Mycoplasma haemofelis and 'Candidatus Mycoplasma haemominutum' in the saliva and salivary glands of haemoplasma-infected cats

Feline haemoplasma infection can cause haemolytic anaemia. The natural method of transmission of haemoplasmas between cats is currently unknown but the nature of some of the risk factors for infection suggests that saliva may act as a mode of transmission. The aim of this study was to determine if Mycoplasma haemofelis (Mhf) and 'Candidatus Mycoplasma haemominutum' (CMhm) DNAs could be amplified from saliva and salivary gland samples collected from haemoplasma-infected cats.