Medical management of spinal cord disease

In spinal cord disease of horses, a complete history, neurologic examination, and adjunctive diagnostic procedures are very helpful in establishing a tentative diagnosis; however, a definitive diagnosis may be difficult or impossible to establish antemortem. Medical management should be initiated with full consideration of possible etiologies and knowledge of the effects and consequences of medical therapies. This article discusses the drugs commonly used in the management of spinal cord disease and the rationale for their use.     

Equine adenovirus 1 isolated from cauda equina neuritis

Equine adenovirus 1 was recovered after four to six passages from two out of three cases of cauda equina neuritis (CEN) using kidney monolayers. Similar treatment of lumbo-sacral spinal cord from six normal horses did not yield adenovirus. All three cases of CEN had antibodies to the neuritogenic myelin protein P2 while immunofluorescence demonstrated that autologous IgG bound to the myelin of affected nerves. Adenovirus was not detected in neural tissue by immunofluorescence.     

An investigation into the role of Chlamydophila spp. in bovine upper respiratory tract disease

An outbreak of upper respiratory tract disease was investigated in a group of 17 housed home-bred calves on a mixed dairy, beef and sheep farm in Devon. Conjunctival swabs were collected and tested for Chlamydophila spp. DNA using a PCR test that detects Chlamydophila abortus and Chlamydophila psittaci. Six of the calves tested gave a positive result. Further epidemiological observations and laboratory testing indicated that the adult dairy cows, from which the affected calves originated, were the most likely source of infection.     

The diets of littoral fish from the Cape Peninsula

Intertidal fish communities in the south·western Cape have a high density and biomass, implying that the fish are important con· sumers in the ntertidal zone. Stomach content analyses of 20 species were undertaken to ascertain which food resources are most heavily exploited and the extent to which the co-existing fish compete for the same food resources. Three prey types, arnphipods, isopods and polychaetes, occur in the diets of almost all the species examined and together comprise more than half the total volume consumed by 14 of the species. Despite the overlap in food types consumed, there was considerable subdivi· sion of the resource, much of which may be explained in terms of horizontal and vertical distribution patterns of the various fish species, their habitat preferences, mouth sizes and changes in diet during growth. The standing stock of food in the pools is thought to be too low to support the resident fish populations, suggesting that some food, at least, is obtained outside the pools while the tide is in. For this reason, the fish are considered to be concentrated in the pools at low tide, indicating that the availability of suitable pool habitats may be important in con· trolling the denSities of intertidal fish communities.     

Digestion rates of prey eaten by intertidal sea anemones from the south-western Cape,South Africa

Digestion rates were determined for natural prey items offered to each of seven species of sea anemones found at Wooley’s Pool in False Bay and to the single species (Bunodactis reynaudi) recorded at Biouberg on the Atlantic coast of the south-western Cape, South Africa.This was done by examining prey items removed from the coelenterons at regular intervals after feeding and assessing their degree of digestion according to a predetermined scale. There was considerable variation in the gut retention times between different anemone species offered the same prey types, with Actinia equina consistently showing the shortest gut retention times (12 h for amphipods, 15 h for pelecypods and 23 h for isopods). Of the various prey categories tested, amphipods tended to be the most rapidly digested group, while molluscs and echinoderms usually remained in the coelenteron the longest. Mean gut retention times in B. reynaudi, the only species found both in False Bay (17°C) and on the cold west coast (12°C) were markedly longer (72 vs 60 h and 43 vs 30 h for pelecypods and gastropods respectively) at the lower temperature.     

Comparison of a standard and a detailed postmortem protocol for detecting Mycobacterium bovis in badgers

A standard postmortem protocol, consisting of gross pathology, culture for mycobacteria and limited selective histopathology, was used in the randomised badger culling trial in Great Britain to detect Mycobacterium bovis infection. This standard protocol was compared with a more detailed protocol in which more tissues were examined grossly, more tissues were cultured, more culture slopes were seeded, the culture period was extended and tissues were examined routinely by histopathology. The standard protocol was more sensitive in badgers with gross visible lesions than in badgers with no gross visible lesions. When applied to the study population of badgers, the overall sensitivity of the standard protocol relative to the more detailed protocol was estimated to be 54.6 per cent (95 per cent confidence interval 44.9 to 69.8 per cent). Badgers with tuberculosis (tb) detected by the standard protocol had a mean of 7.6 tissues with microscopic lesions suspicious of tb. The additional badgers detected by the detailed protocol had a mean of 4.4 tissues with microscopic lesions suspicious of tb.