执业兽医资格考试制度下动物医学专业动物寄生虫病学课程教学改革与实践简

探讨了执业兽医资格考试制度下的动物寄生虫病学课程考试概况、教学内容和体系的调整、教学方法和手段的改进、实践教学模式的创新、考核方式的改革.通过改革,该课程初步成为一门有自身特色、教学内容新颖生动、教学方法与手段先进、理论和实践结合效果较好的课程,提升了人才培养质量,为学生毕业后顺利通过考试奠定了基础.     

Prevention of intestinal parasites in a tri‐border area of Latin America: Children perceptions and an integral health education strategy

To investigate knowledge of school‐aged children and their perception on intestinal parasites, and to assess knowledge reconstruction on prevention practices after specific training in the subject. We performed an activity package that included the analysis of children's drawings of intestinal parasites, and information and communication technologies (ITCs) to transfer knowledge about these pathogens and prevention measures. Retrieval learning activities were performed to fixation of general and specific prevention and control measures.Overall, we found that there is a knowledge gap in many aspects of parasite biology and ecology, and therefore on the risk of infection and acquisition mechanisms. After ITCs, the children improved their knowledge over non‐trained children.The approaches used to transfer knowledge and for learning, fixation were valuable tools for incorporating changes in misconceptions and in the deep‐rooted habits that favour entero‐parasitic diseases. This has important implications for the specific design of future education materials and campaigns. Understanding of perceptions helps to provide justifications and knowledge to achieve changes in unhealthy habits, and it constitutes the basis for the transformation of many risky practices.     

Recurrent Actinobacillus peritonitis in an otherwise healthy thoroughbred horse

A Thoroughbred gelding in North America was evaluated for Actinobacillus peritonitis on three different occasions over a 4-year period. At each presentation, peritoneal fluid had an elevated nucleated cell count (220,000-550,000 cells/μL) characterised by non-degenerate neutrophils, no visible bacteria, an elevated total protein (4.6-5.5 g/dL) and bacterial culture yielding Actinobacillus spp. Actinobacillus peritonitis appears to be a regional disease occurring in Australia and less commonly in New Zealand and North America. Recurrence, other than incomplete resolution, has not been previously reported. This case highlights the classical presentation, response to therapy and excellent prognosis despite the alarmingly abnormal peritoneal fluid characteristic of Actinobacillus peritonitis and questions the role of parasite migration in the pathogenesis. Finally, this case is remarkable because Actinobacillus peritonitis was recurrent over several years in an otherwise normal horse.     

家畜寄生虫学教学改革的探讨

教学改革的关键是课程改革,其核心是教学内容和教学方法的更新。在调整教学内容的基础上,采用生动的教学手段,加强实验教学,注重理论联系实际,提高学生的学习兴趣和动手能力,培养学生的整体思维、逻辑思维和独立学习的能力。     

The Gordon Memorial Lecture: novel approaches to controlling bacterial infections

ABSTRACT

1. There is huge emphasis in veterinary and agricultural science in understanding the basics of processes and exploiting them for benefits to the economy and human and animal welfare. It is always valuable to be able to step back from existing or favourite hypotheses and paradigms to look at an area of work or problem and see whether a different approach might be productive particularly by drawing parallels with other sometimes unrelated problems.

2. This approach has been used to explore (i) the use of live, attenuated Salmonella vaccines to generate a new form of competitive exclusion, (ii) gene expression technology for the design of improved inactivated vaccines (iii) use of cytokine therapy to reduce persistent carriage by Salmonella, (iv) using bacteriophages to reduce carcass contamination by food-borne pathogens and reduce carriage of antibiotic resistance plasmids.

3. The potential for extending virus therapy to parasite infections is also discussed.     

Future of the animal health industry at a time of food crisis

It is popular in some quarters to say that there is no food crisis; that there is food aplenty; and that the problem is one of distribution or other over-arching technical difficulty. To the starving, however, there is a food crisis; and it neither speaks well nor bodes well for humanity if we dismiss their plight so glibly. The United Nations has called for a large and rapid increase in food production. Veterinary parasitologists and industry leaders can contribute to the production of healthier livestock and the expansion of aquaculture, but enhanced production and better delivery of plant foods may provide faster relief. Although livestock farming is not the most energy-efficient way of producing food, meat will remain a significant component of the global diet for the foreseeable future. New measures for parasite control will be needed, and we must improve our methods of inventing them. They need not act directly against the parasite. In the distant future lie other threats to the inhabitants of planet Earth, and here we must acknowledge the cogency of the no-food-crisis argument. In the long term, the production of animal foods and animal feeds will be revamped in ways that depend on how (or whether) we solve the energy crisis, the environmental crisis, the increasingly dire regional population crises, and the current world financial crisis. Throughout the 20th century, the animal health industry had to adapt to industrialization and expansive agribusiness. It will have to adapt to even greater changes in the 21st century and beyond.     

Simultaneous analysis of the intestinal parasites and diet through eDNA metabarcoding

Agricultural expansion and intensification are having a huge impact on plant and arthropod diversity and abundance, affecting food availability for farmland birds. Difficult food access, in turn, can lead to immunosuppression and a higher incidence of parasites. In the studies designed to examine changes in the diet of birds and their parasites, metabarcoding is proving particularly useful. This technique requires mini-barcodes capable of amplifying the DNA of target organisms from fecal environmental DNA. To help to understand the impact of agricultural expansion on biodiversity, this study sought to design and identify mini-barcodes that might simultaneously assess diet and intestinal parasites from the feces of farmland birds. The capacity to identify diet and parasites of 2 existing and 3 newly developed mini-barcodes was tested “in silico” in relation to the behavior of a reference eukaryotic barcode. Among the newly designed mini-barcodes, MiniB18S_81 showed the higher taxonomic coverage of eukaryotic taxa and a greater amplification and identification capacity for diet and parasite taxa. Moreover, when it was tested on fecal samples from 5 different steppe bird species, MiniB18S_81 showed high taxonomic resolution of the most relevant diet and parasite phyla, Arthropoda, Nematoda, Platyhelminthes, and Apicomplexa at the order level. Thus, the mini-barcode developed emerges as an excellent tool to simultaneously provide detailed information regarding the diet and parasites of birds, essential for conservation and management.     

Molecular tools--advances, opportunities and prospects

Modern molecular technologies are having a substantial impact in many fundamental and applied areas of parasitology. In particular, polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-coupled approaches have found broad applicability because their sensitivity permits the enzymatic amplification of gene fragments from minute quantities of nucleic acids from tiny amounts of parasite material. Also, high-resolution electrophoretic and genomic methods are finding increased utility. This paper briefly discusses some developments and applications of DNA methods to parasites and highlights their usefulness or potential for those of veterinary importance. Selected examples of applications with implications in fundamental (systematics, population genetics, epidemiology and ecology) and applied (diagnosis, prevention and control) areas are presented. The focus is mainly on tools for the accurate identification of parasitic nematodes and protozoa of socio-economic importance, the diagnosis of infections and the detection of genetic variability using PCR-coupled mutation scanning technology.     

Canada and Veterinary Parasitology

A World Association for the Advancement of Veterinary Parasitology tradition for its conference is to present some highlights of the country hosting the event, and with an emphasis on the history of, and research in, veterinary parasitology. A review of Canada's peoples, physiography, climate, natural resources, agriculture, animal populations, pioneers in veterinary parasitology, research accomplishments by other veterinary parasitologists, centres for research in veterinary parasitology, and major current research had been presented at a World Association for the Advancement of Veterinary Parasitology Conference in Canada in 1987, and was published. The present paper updates the information on the above topics for the 22 years since this conference was last held in Canada.     

基因差异表达分析技术在寄生虫学中的应用研究进展

生物体表现出的各种生物学特性,主要是由于基因在不同细胞间及不同生长阶段的选择性差异表达引起的.这些基因的差异表达按特定的时间和空间顺序有序地进行着,决定了生命活动的多样性.而基因差异表达研究的各种分析技术正是在此基础上发展起来并在兽医寄生虫学中得到广泛应用.以mRNA差异显示、抑制消减杂交法和DNA微列阵分析等为代表的基因差异表达分析技术,在基因表达谱的分析及基因生物学功能研究,阐述寄生虫的发病机制,寄生虫疾病诊断,筛选合适的药物靶标和疫苗候选分子有效地防病治病方面发挥着重要作用.