Tag: Dogs

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First validated canine behavioral genetics, findings of nine fear, aggression traits in dogs

Post author By Vetscite
Post date September 13, 2016

Anxiety disorders are the most common type of mental illness in the United States. And while much is understood about the biochemistry of anxiety, little is known about the genetic variation associated with it.

Recently published in BMC Genetics, a study led by researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital reports that genetic predisposition to aggression toward an owner or a familiar dog is distinct from that for fear and aggression directed at unfamiliar humans and dogs. The researchers identified approximately 12 genes associated with these traits.

“Our strongest focus is on specific genes related to aggression toward unfamiliar humans and dogs, which are associated with highly relevant genes at two genome regions,” said Carlos Alvarez, PhD, principal investigator in the Center for Molecular and Human Genetics in The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. “Those genes are consistent with the core fear and aggression neural pathway known as the amygdala to hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.”

The findings not only relate to the most important dog behavioral problems but are also likely to be highly relevant to human anxiety disorders, according to Dr. Alvarez.

While the most immediate implications are for veterinary behavioral medicine — genetic testing for risk of specific types of fear and aggression, the long term implications for adults and children with anxiety disorders are encouraging.

Because these risk variants are common across dog breeds, the canine veterinary setting provides an ideal testbed for new therapies targeting those biochemical pathways. Once it is determined which neuronal circuits are affected by the risk variation, this will likely reveal drug targets that could be inhibited or activated to increase or decrease the emotional behavioral effects. Those findings can immediately be tested in pet dog patients under owner consent. And, if those therapies are effective in dogs, they can then be applied to humans with similar conditions. Knowledge of the affected pathways will also provide biomarkers that can be used to identify the patients who are most likely to respond to such treatments.

“This project has only just begun,” said Dr. Alvarez. “We are continuing to identify and validate other genes associated with these traits, including the expansion of dog breeds studied and biological validation of the findings. We are excited about what this work will continue to uncover.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160810180908.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Behaviour (Ethology), Dogs, Genetics

News

Canine babesiosis outbreak in UK under control, but needs monitoring

Post author By Vetscite
Post date September 13, 2016

Scientists at the University of Liverpool are using the health records of dogs to monitor the status of a potentially fatal tick-borne disease that appears to have been imported into the UK.

Canine babesiosis is transmitted to dogs by infected ticks, with symptoms including a lack of appetite, fever and jaundice. Although normally only found in mainland Europe, in February 2016 three cases of Babesia were reported at one Essex veterinary practice in dogs that had not travelled abroad.

The outbreak was widely reported in the national media, with concern raised that the disease could soon affect dogs elsewhere in the country.

A team from the Small Animal Veterinary Surveillance Network (SAVSNET), which is as a partnership between the University of Liverpool and the British Small Animal Veterinary Association, used electronic health records and laboratory data to assess the risk of this emerging disease in the UK.

Using data from 2015, they analysed cases of reported tick bites and Babesia in dogs from 392 volunteer veterinary premises across the UK.

Published in the Veterinary Record, the analysis revealed a low background level of Babesia infection in the UK. Based on the sporadic and geographically distributed nature, these cases were most likely linked to overseas travel.

The laboratory data also confirmed a small cluster of eight Babesia cases in the Chelmsford area of Essex, where the reported outbreak was centred. The clustering of these cases was consistent with exposure to a local infected tick population.

Since March this year, SAVSNET has seen no new diagnoses of Babesia in Chelmsford, suggesting that the outbreak may be currently under control.

Dr Alan Radford, SAVSNET academic lead, said: “While this is positive news, we would like to remind vets to keep Babesia in mind, especially in practices close to the outbreak where infected ticks are likely to still be active, and persist in the coming years. Currently this seems to be a rare disease but one that we need to keep an eye on.

“One striking finding from our analysis is that ticks remain active in winter, albeit at presumably low levels. It’s therefore important that we continue to monitor tick activity, and we would encourage vets and nurses across the UK to keep recording information about tick bites they treat.”

Real-time updates of Babesia cases and other important diseases, based on data submitted to SAVSNET, are now available to view as an interactive map on the SAVSNET website.

Dr Fernando Sánchez-Vizcaíno, lead author on the paper concluded: “We’ve shown that health informatics surveillance can help provide real-time local updates on important and emerging pathogens, such as Babesia. This could help monitor the response to outbreaks, and in the future contribute to their early detection.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160818093436.htm Original web page Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Parasitology

News

* Gene therapy treats all muscles in the body in muscular dystrophy dogs

Post author By Vetscite
Post date September 13, 2016

Muscular dystrophy, which affects approximately 250,000 people in the U.S., occurs when damaged muscle tissue is replaced with fibrous, fatty or bony tissue and loses function. For years, scientists have searched for a way to successfully treat the most common form of the disease, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), which primarily affects boys. Now, a team of University of Missouri researchers have successfully treated dogs with DMD and say that human clinical trials are being planned in the next few years.

“This is the most common muscle disease in boys, and there is currently no effective therapy,” said Dongsheng Duan, the study leader and the Margaret Proctor Mulligan Professor in Medical Research at the MU School of Medicine. “This discovery took our research team more than 10 years, but we believe we are on the cusp of having a treatment for the disease.”

Patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy have a gene mutation that disrupts the production of a protein known as “dystrophin.” Absence of dystrophin starts a chain reaction that eventually leads to muscle cell degeneration and death. Affected boys lose their ability to walk and breathe as they get older. This places significant limitations on individuals afflicted with the disease. Dystrophin also is one of the largest genes in the human body.

“Due to its size, it is impossible to deliver the entire gene with a gene therapy vector, which is the vehicle that carries the therapeutic gene to the correct site in the body,” Duan said. “Through previous research, we were able to develop a miniature version of this gene called a microgene. This minimized dystrophin protected all muscles in the body of diseased mice.”

However, it took the team more than 10 years to develop a strategy that can safely send the micro-dystrophin to every muscle in a dog that is afflicted by the disease. The dog has a body size similar to that of an affected boy. Success in the dog will set the foundation for human tests.

In this latest study, the MU team demonstrated for the first time that a common virus can deliver the microgene to all muscles in the body of a diseased dog. The dogs were injected with the virus when they were two to three months old and just starting to show signs of DMD. The dogs are now six to seven months old and continue to develop normally

“The virus we are using is one of the most common viruses; it is also a virus that produces no symptoms in the human body, making this a safe way to spread the dystrophin gene throughout the body,” Duan said. “These dogs develop DMD naturally in a similar manner as humans. It’s important to treat DMD early before the disease does a lot of damage as this therapy has the greatest impact at the early stages in life.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151022141722.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Genetics, Virology

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Modifying a living genome with genetic equivalent of ‘search and replace’

Post author By Vetscite
Post date September 13, 2016

Researchers including George Church have made further progress on the path to fully rewriting the genome of living bacteria. Such a recoded organism, once available, could feature functionality not seen in nature. It could also make the bacteria cultivated in pharmaceutical and other industries immune to viruses, saving billions of dollars of losses due to viral contamination.

Finally, the altered genetic information in such an organism wouldn’t be able to contaminate natural cells because of the code’s limitations outside the lab, researchers say, so its creation could stop laboratory engineered organisms from genetically contaminating wildlife. In the DNA of living organisms, the same amino acid can be encoded by multiple codons — DNA “words” of three nucleotide letters.

Here, building on previous work that demonstrated it was possible to use the genetic equivalent of “search and replace” in Escherichia coli to substitute a single codon with an alternative, Nili Ostrov, Church and colleagues explored the feasibility of replacing multiple codons, genome-wide.

The researchers attempted to reduce the number of codons in the E. coli code from 64 to 57 by exploring how to eradicate more than 60,000 instances of seven different codons. They systematically replaced all 62,214 instances of these seven codons with alternatives. In the recoded E.coli segments that the researchers assembled and tested, 63% of all instances of the seven codons were replaced, the researchers say, and most of the genes impacted by underlying amino acid changes were expressed normally.

Though they did not achieve a fully operational 57-codon E. coli, “a functionally altered genome of this scale has not yet been explored,” the authors write. Their results provide critical insights into the next step in the genome rewriting arena — creating a fully recoded organism.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160818145954.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Oncology, Pharmacology

News

* Scientists test nanoparticle drug delivery in dogs with osteosarcoma

Post author By Vetscite
Post date September 13, 2016

At the University of Illinois, an engineer teamed up with a veterinarian to test a bone cancer drug delivery system in animals bigger than the standard animal model, the mouse. They chose dogs — mammals closer in size and biology to humans — with naturally occurring bone cancers, which also are a lot like human bone tumors.

In clinical trials, the dogs tolerated the highest planned doses of cancer-drug-laden nanoparticles with no signs of toxicity. As in mice, the particles homed in on tumor sites, thanks to a coating of the drug pamidronate, which preferentially binds to degraded sites in bone. The nanoparticles also showed anti-cancer activity in mice and dogs.

The researchers report their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

These findings are a proof-of-concept that nanoparticles can be used to target bone cancers in large mammals, the researchers said. The approach may one day be used to treat metastatic skeletal cancers, they said.

The dogs were companion animals with bone cancer that were submitted for the research trials by their owners, said U. of I. veterinary clinical medicine professor Dr. Timothy Fan, who led the study with materials science and engineering professor Jianjun Cheng. All of the dogs were 40 to 60 kilograms (88 to 132 pounds) in weight, he said.

“We wanted to see if we could evaluate these drug-delivery strategies, not only in a mouse model, but also at a scale that would mimic what a person would get,” Fan said. “The amount of nanoparticle that we ended up giving to these dogs was a thousand-fold greater in quantity than what we would typically give a mouse.”

Using nanoparticles with payloads of drugs to target specific tissues in the body is nothing new, Cheng said. Countless studies test such approaches in mice, and dozens of “nanopharmaceuticals” are approved for use in humans. But the drug-development pipeline is long, and the leap from mouse models to humans is problematic, he said.

“Human bone tumors are much bigger than those of mice,” Cheng said. “Nanoparticles must penetrate more deeply into larger tumors to be effective. That is why we must find animal models that are closer in scale to those of humans.”

Mice used in cancer research have other limitations. Researchers usually inject human or other tumor cells into their bodies to mimic human cancers, Fan said. They also are bred to have compromised immune systems, to prevent them from rejecting the tumors.

“That is one of the very clear drawbacks of using a mouse model,” Fan said. “it doesn’t recapitulate the normal immune system that we deal with every day in the person or in a dog.”

There also are limitations to working with dogs, he said. Dogs diagnosed with bone cancer often arrive at the clinic at a very advanced stage of the disease, whereas in humans, bone cancer is usually detected early because people complain about the pain and have it investigated.

“On the flip side of that, I would say that if you are able to demonstrate anti-cancer activity in a dog with very advanced disease, then it would be likely that you would have equivalent or better activity in people with a less advanced stage of the disease,” Fan said.

Many more years of work remain before this or a similar drug-delivery system can be tested in humans with inoperable bone cancer, the researchers said.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160725192351.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Oncology, Pharmacology

News

* Scientists warn about health of English bulldog

Post author By Vetscite
Post date August 30, 2016

According to new research it could be difficult to improve the health of the English bulldog, one of the world’s unhealthiest dog breeds, from within its existing gene pool. The findings will be published in the open access journal Canine Genetics and Epidemiology.

The English bulldog’s limited genetic diversity could minimize the ability of breeders to recreate healthy phenotypes from the existing genetic stock, which were created by human-directed selection for specific desired physical traits.

Many large regions of the bulldog’s genome have been altered to attain the extreme changes in its outward appearance. This includes significant loss of genetic diversity in the region of the genome that contains many of the genes that regulate normal immune responses. Despite this, the English bulldog is one of the most popular dog breeds, particularly in the US, where the bulldog was the fourth most popular pure breed in 2015.

Lead author, Niels Pedersen from Center for Companion Animal Health, University of California, US, said: “The English bulldog has reached the point where popularity can no longer excuse the health problems that the average bulldog endures in its often brief lifetime. More people seemed to be enamoured with its appearance than concerned about its health. Improving health through genetic manipulations presumes that enough diversity still exists to improve the breed from within, and if not, to add diversity by outcrossing to other breeds. We found that little genetic ‘wiggle room’ still exists in the breed to make additional genetic changes.”

Pedersen adds: “These changes have occurred over hundreds of years but have become particularly rapid over the last few decades. Breeders are managing the little diversity that still exists in the best possible manner, but there are still many individuals sired from highly inbred parents. Unfortunately eliminating all the mutations may not solve the problem as this would further reduce genetic diversity. We would also question whether further modifications, such as rapidly introducing new rare coat colors, making the body smaller and more compact and adding more wrinkles in the coat, could improve the bulldog’s already fragile genetic diversity.”

This is the first broad-based assessment of genetic diversity in the English bulldog using DNA analysis rather than pedigrees. DNA analysis is needed to measure, monitor and maintain genetic diversity. This has been done in several other breeds including Standard and Miniature Poodles, American Golden Retrievers, and American and European Italian Greyhound.

The researchers sought to identify whether there is enough genetic diversity still existing within the breed to undertake significant improvements from within the existing gene pool. The researchers examined 102 English bulldogs, 87 dogs from the US and 15 dogs from other countries. These were genetically compared with an additional 37 English bulldogs presented to the US Davis Veterinary Clinical Services for health problems, to determine that the genetic problems of the English bulldogs were not the fault of commercial breeders or puppy mills.

Many Swiss breeders have started to outcross the breed with the Olde English Bulldogge (an American breed) to create the Continental Bulldog, hoping to improve the breed’s health. Although outcrossing the English bulldog could improve its health, many breeders feel that any deviations from the original standard will no longer be an English bulldog.

The breed started from a relatively small genetic base with a founder population of 68 individuals after 1835 and has undergone a number of human created artificial bottlenecks (drastic reductions in population size). These could also have greatly diminished genetic diversity.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160729092534.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Genetics

News

Labrador study offers vets clues on why dogs’ tails lose their wag

Post author By Vetscite
Post date August 30, 2016

A painful condition that affects dogs’ tails may be more common than previously thought, a study suggests.

The research offers clues to potential causes of the illness — known as limber tail — which mostly affects larger working dog breeds, such as Labrador Retrievers.

Researchers say their findings are the first step towards preventing the distressing condition, which causes the tail to become limp and painful.

The team at the University of Edinburgh compared 38 cases of limber tail that were identified from owners’ reports about their dogs’ health with 86 dogs that had no tail symptoms.

Their goal was to gain insight into habits and lifestyle factors that might explain why some dogs are affected and not others.

The majority of dogs in the study were pets but those affected by limber tail were more likely to be working dogs, they found.

Swimming has previously been thought to be a risk factor for limber tail, which is sometimes known as ‘swimmers’ tail’. Some but not all of the affected dogs had been swimming prior to the onset of symptoms, the study found.

Dogs with the condition were more likely to live in northern areas, lending support to anecdotal reports that limber tail is associated with exposure to the cold.

Labradors that had suffered limber tail were more likely to be related to each other than unaffected dogs, which may indicate an underlying genetic risk.

Experts hope that further studies will identify genes associated with the condition, which could one day help breeders to identify animals that are likely to be affected. Over time, this could help to reduce the disease prevalence.

The symptoms usually resolve within a few days or weeks so many cases are not reported to vets. This may be why it has been so underestimated in the past. However, owners report that it can be very painful and distressing for the animals.

The study is the first large-scale investigation of limber tail and was conducted as part of the Dogslife project, which follows the health and wellbeing of more than 6000 Labradors from across the UK.

Dr Carys Pugh, who led the study at the University’s Roslin Institute and Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, said: “We were surprised by how many owners were reporting limber tail to us but it meant we had the chance to do a detailed investigation.

“We have been able to add evidence to a lot of internet speculation about risk factors and the new findings relating to geographical region and family links give us avenues to pursue in understanding and avoiding the condition.”

The study, published in the Veterinary Record, was funded by the Kennel Club Charitable Trust. The Roslin Institute receives strategic funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160801110205.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Physiology (e.g. Exercise Physiology)

News

A study led by researchers at The University of Nottingham has discovered that the fertility of dogs may have suffered a sharp decline over the past three decades

Post author By Vetscite
Post date August 30, 2016

The research, published in the academic journal Scientific Reports, found that sperm quality in a population of stud dogs studied over a 26-year period had fallen significantly.

The work has highlighted a potential link to environmental contaminants, after they were able to demonstrate that chemicals found in the sperm and testes of adult dogs — and in some commercially available pet foods — had a detrimental effect on sperm function at the concentrations detected.

As ‘man’s best friend’ and closest companion animal, the researchers believe that the latest results may offer a new piece of the puzzle over the reported significant decline in human semen quality — a controversial subject which scientists continue to debate.

Dr Richard Lea, Reader in Reproductive Biology in the University’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, who led the research said: “This is the first time that such a decline in male fertility has been reported in the dog and we believe this is due to environmental contaminants, some of which we have detected in dog food and in the sperm and testes of the animals themselves.

“While further research is needed to conclusively demonstrate a link, the dog may indeed be a sentinel for humans — it shares the same environment, exhibits the same range of diseases, many with the same frequency and responds in a similar way to therapies.”

The study centred on samples taken from stud dogs at an assistance dogs breeding centre over the course of 26 years. Professor Gary England, Foundation Dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science and Professor of Comparative Veterinary Reproduction, who oversaw the collection of semen said: “The strength of the study is that all samples were processed and analysed by the same laboratory using the same protocols during that time and consequently the data generated is robust.”

The work centred on five specific breeds of dogs — Labrador retriever, golden retriever, curly coat retriever, border collie and German shepherd — with between 42 and 97 dogs studied every year.

Semen was collected from the dogs and analysed to assess the percentage of sperm that showed a normal forward progressive pattern of motility and that appeared normal under a microscope (morphology).

Over the 26 years of the study, they found a striking decrease in the percentage of normal motile sperm. Between 1988 and 1998, sperm motility declined by 2.5 per cent per year and following a short period when stud dogs of compromised fertility were retired from the study, sperm motility from 2002 to 2014 continued to decline at a rate of 1.2% per year.

In addition, the team discovered that the male pups generated from the stud dogs with declining semen quality, had an increased incidence of cryptorchidism, a condition in which the testes of pups fail to correctly descend into the scrotum.

Sperm collected from the same breeding population of dogs, and testes recovered from dogs undergoing routine castration, were found to contain environmental contaminants at concentrations able to disrupt sperm motility and viability when tested.

The same chemicals that disrupted sperm quality, were also discovered in a range of commercially available dog foods — including brands specifically marketed for puppies.

Dr Lea added: “We looked at other factors which may also play a part, for example, some genetic conditions do have an impact on fertility. However, we discounted that because 26 years is simply too rapid a decline to be associated with a genetic problem.”

Over the past 70 years, studies have suggested a significant decline in human semen quality and a cluster of issues called ‘testicular dysgenesis syndrome’ that impact on male fertility which also include increased incidence of testicular cancer, the birth defect hypospadias and undescended testes.

However, declining human semen quality remains a controversial issue — many have criticised the variability of the data of the studies on the basis of changes in laboratory methods, training of laboratory personnel and improved quality control over the years.

Dr Lea added: “The Nottingham study presents a unique set of reliable data from a controlled population which is free from these factors. This raises the tantalising prospect that the decline in canine semen quality has an environmental cause and begs the question whether a similar effect could also be observed in human male fertility.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809095138.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Reproduction

News

* Genetic mutation causes ataxia in humans, dogs

Post author By Vetscite
Post date July 12, 2016

Cerebellar ataxia is a condition of the cerebellum that causes an inability to coordinate muscle movements. A study publishing June 16 in Cell Reports now describes a new genetic mutation as an additional cause of ataxia in humans and mice. The mutation, in the gene CAPN1, affects the function of the enzyme calpain-1 and causes abnormal brain development. The same genetic mutation is also associated with ataxia in Parson Russell Terrier dogs.

“There are a number of genes linked to motor function that can be involved in ataxia when mutated,” says Michel Baudry, a neurobiologist at Western University of Health Sciences. “Not only have we identified another, but we’ve also refined our understanding of the calpain enzymes, which is important because several companies have been talking about using calpain inhibitors to treat neurodegenerative diseases.”

Calpain is an enzyme involved with learning, memory, and neurodegeneration in the brain, but it comes in two major forms–calpain-1 and calpain-2. “Nobody could make much progress on figuring out what each form of calpain was doing, because most of the pharmacological studies used molecules that inhibit both types at once” says Baudry. But about eight years ago, Baudry’s team obtained a line of mice genetically engineered to lack only calpain-1 to examine the differences.

Baudry’s mouse studies caught the attention of Henry Houlden, a neurologist at University College London, who was leading a team investigating ataxia. “Around two years ago, we identified two families with CAPN1 mutations with ataxia and spasticity,” Houlden explains. Once the researchers determined that the mutation affected calpain-1’s function, they looked up Baudry’s work on the calpain-1 knockout mice. “Together, we started to investigate the function of this gene,” says Houlden. The current study includes four families with members that have CAPN1 mutations and display symptoms of ataxia.

Baudry’s team started testing whether the knockout mice had ataxia by tracking their balance when placed on a rotating rod. “We had never looked at the cerebellum in our mice before,” says Baudry. “But sure enough, we found that they had mild cerebellar ataxia.”

The researchers demonstrated that during the first week after birth, the mice lacking calpain-1 had a much higher rate of neuronal death in their cerebellum, as compared to normal mice, and many of their synapses failed to mature.

“Calpain-1 is neuroprotective,” explains Baudry. “When the brain matures, excess neurons are supposed to be pruned–but calpain-1 prevents that process from getting out of control.” The team further determined that calpain-1 works normally by degrading an enzyme called PHLPP1, a protein phosphatase involved in programmed cell death. Injecting another compound involved in the pathway during the first postnatal week caused the newborn mice with CAPN1 mutations to develop normally.

Pharmacologically, the attempts to use calpain inhibitors in the clinic may not be working because they don’t discriminate between calpain-1 and calpain-2, says Baudry: “If you want to try to address neurodegeneration, you have to use a calpain-2 inhibitor.” Baudry is currently working with a team to develop calpain-2 inhibitors as neuroprotective drugs, under the umbrella of a new company called NeurAegis.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160616140715.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Human, Neurology

News

* Stem cells for Snoopy: pet medicines spark a biotech boom

Post author By Vetscite
Post date July 12, 2016

Many pets are treated like family members — and that is often reflected in the veterinary care that they receive.

Little Jonah once radiated pain. The 12-year-old Maltese dog’s body was curled and stiff from the effort of walking with damaged knees. But after Kristi Lively, Jonah’s veterinary surgeon, enrolled him in a clinical trial of a therapeutic antibody to treat pain, his owner returned to the Village Veterinary Medical Center in Farragut, Tennessee, with tears in her eyes. Her tiny companion trotted easily alongside her. “I got my dog back,” she said.

Such cutting-edge treatments were once reserved for humans. But in recent years, the changing nature of pet ownership has sparked a boom in sophisticated therapies for animals — and many are now approaching the market. On 9 June, the company that sponsored the antibody trial, Nexvet of Dublin, presented its results at the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine Forum in Denver, Colorado. Other companies are working on bone-marrow transplants, sophisticated cell therapies and cancer vaccines.

“When I was a child and just wanted to be a veterinarian, certainly I didn’t imagine I’d be doing what I’m doing now,” says Heather Wilson-Robles, a veterinary oncologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, who is engineering canine immune cells to fight cancer.

Cancer, arthritis and other diseases associated with old age are becoming more common as pets live longer, thanks in part to better treatment by their owners. “A generation ago, as beloved as Snoopy was, he lived in the backyard in the doghouse,” says Steven St. Peter, president of Aratana Therapeutics, a pet-therapy company in Leawood, Kansas. Now, pets are considered family members, often sharing beds with owners who are willing to pay hefty veterinary bills.

Many standard pet treatments are human drugs given at lower doses to account for animals’ smaller size. But antibodies and cell therapies generally cannot be used across species without provoking an unwanted immune response. And some human treatments simply will not work in pets: many common pain medications are toxic to cats.

Nexvet, which has raised more than US$80 million from investors since it was founded in 2011, takes antibodies that have been approved as human medicines and alters their structures to make them effective in cats or dogs. Moving from a drug lead to safety testing takes about 18 months, says chief executive Mark Heffernan, who estimates that Nexvet’s antibody therapies for pain will cost around $1,500 a year. The company is now looking into developing antibodies that block a protein called PD-1, thereby unleashing the immune system to fight cancer. This approach has shown tremendous promise for treating cancer in people.

Aratana is also developing antibody therapies for pets, and has applied for regulatory approval of a cancer vaccine that uses a bacterium to target malignant cells. The company hopes to move into cell therapies, and to develop a way to manufacture stem cells from fat for use against joint pain. St. Peter wants his company to be the first to win approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for a stem-cell therapy — ahead of firms developing such treatments for people.

Other forms of cell therapy could also result in new veterinary remedies. Last July, veterinary oncologist Colleen O’Connor founded a cancer-treatment company in Houston, Texas, called CAVU Biotherapies. To treat lymphoma, CAVU aims to isolate a sick dog’s immune cells, rejuvenate them in culture, and then infuse them back into the dog’s blood to stimulate an immune response. O’Connor used a similar approach in 2011 to treat Dakota, a bichon frise that belonged to then-US Senator Kent Conrad (Democrat, North Dakota). The dog, a Capitol Hill fixture known as the ‘101st senator’, entered remission but later died of cancer.

For many pet owners, cost is no object. Steven Suter, a veterinary oncologist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, runs a bone-marrow transplant clinic for dogs that claims to cure 33% of lymphomas. Suter’s clinic was booked solid after it opened in 2008, despite offering treatment that can cost a dog owner up to $24,000. Still, Suter has worked to drive down the cost of care: to filter stem cells from blood, his clinic uses second-hand machines that were donated by a physician with a soft spot for schnauzers. Earlier this year, several major pet-insurance companies added bone-marrow transplants to the lists of procedures that they will pay for.

But when it comes to the latest pet treatments, some animals might be more equal than others. Cats are “physiologically finicky”, Suter says, noting that they may be too small to allow bone-marrow transplants using his usual machines. And O’Connor notes that cats’ immune systems also differ wildly from those of both humans and dogs — meaning that more basic research must be done before sophisticated immunotherapies can be deployed against feline ailments.

At Lively’s clinic, many dog and cat owners were grateful that their animals could participate in Nexvet’s clinical trial. But about a month after the trial ended, the effects of the antibody therapy began to fade. Jonah’s owner was among the clients who called Lively, desperate for a way to access the treatment again. “It’s tough,” Lively says. “They’ll have to wait until this product comes to market.”

Nature 534, 303–304 (16 June 2016) doi:10.1038/534303a

http://www.nature.com/ Nature

http://www.nature.com/news/stem-cells-for-snoopy-pet-medicines-spark-a-biotech-boom-1.20087 Original web page at Nature

Tags Cell Biology, Dogs, Pharmacology

News

Dogs were domesticated not once, but twice … in different parts of the world

Post author By Vetscite
Post date June 28, 2016

The question, ‘Where do domestic dogs come from?’, has vexed scholars for a very long time. Some argue that humans first domesticated wolves in Europe, while others claim this happened in Central Asia or China. A new paper, published in Science, suggests that all these claims may be right. Supported by funding from the European Research Council and the Natural Environment Research Council, a large international team of scientists compared genetic data with existing archaeological evidence and show that man’s best friend may have emerged independently from two separate (possibly now extinct) wolf populations that lived on opposite sides of the Eurasian continent. This means that dogs may have been domesticated not once, as widely believed, but twice.

A major international research project on dog domestication, led by the University of Oxford, has reconstructed the evolutionary history of dogs by first sequencing the genome (at Trinity College Dublin) of a 4,800-year old medium-sized dog from bone excavated at the Neolithic Passage Tomb of Newgrange, Ireland. The team (including French researchers based in Lyon and at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris) also obtained mitochondrial DNA from 59 ancient dogs living between 14,000 to 3,000 years ago and then compared them with the genetic signatures of more than 2,500 previously studied modern dogs.

The results of their analyses demonstrate a genetic separation between modern dog populations currently living in East Asia and Europe. Curiously, this population split seems to have taken place after the earliest archaeological evidence for dogs in Europe. The new genetic evidence also shows a population turnover in Europe that appears to have mostly replaced the earliest domestic dog population there, which supports the evidence that there was a later arrival of dogs from elsewhere. Lastly, a review of the archaeological record shows that early dogs appear in both the East and West more than 12,000 years ago, but in Central Asia no earlier than 8,000 years ago.

Combined, these new findings suggest that dogs were first domesticated from geographically separated wolf populations on opposite sides of the Eurasian continent. At some point after their domestication, the eastern dogs dispersed with migrating humans into Europe where they mixed with and mostly replaced the earliest European dogs. Most dogs today are a mixture of both Eastern and Western dogs — one reason why previous genetic studies have been difficult to interpret.

The international project (which is combining ancient and modern genetic data with detailed morphological and archaeological research) is currently analysing thousands of ancient dogs and wolves to test this new perspective, and to establish the timing and location of the origins of our oldest pet.

Senior author and Director of Palaeo-BARN (the Wellcome Trust Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network) at Oxford University, Professor Greger Larson, said: ‘Animal domestication is a rare thing and a lot of evidence is required to overturn the assumption that it happened just once in any species. Our ancient DNA evidence, combined with the archaeological record of early dogs, suggests that we need to reconsider the number of times dogs were domesticated independently. Maybe the reason there hasn’t yet been a consensus about where dogs were domesticated is because everyone has been a little bit right.’

Lead author Dr Laurent Frantz, from the Palaeo-BARN, commented: ‘Reconstructing the past from modern DNA is a bit like looking into the history books: you never know whether crucial parts have been erased. Ancient DNA, on the other hand, is like a time machine, and allows us to observe the past directly.’

Senior author Professor Dan Bradley, from Trinity College Dublin, commented: ‘The Newgrange dog bone had the best preserved ancient DNA we have ever encountered, giving us prehistoric genome of rare high quality. It is not just a postcard from the past, rather a full package special delivery.’

Professor Keith Dobney, co-author and co-director of the dog domestication project from Liverpool University’s Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, is heartened by these first significant results. ‘With the generous collaboration of many colleagues from across the world-sharing ideas, key specimens and their own data — the genetic and archaeological evidence are now beginning to tell a new coherent story. With so much new and exciting data to come, we will finally be able to uncover the true history of man’s best friend.’

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160602151723.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Behaviour (Ethology), Dogs, Genetics

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* Research suggests a way to identify animals at risk of blood clots

Post author By Vetscite
Post date June 14, 2016

Patients who are critically ill, be they dog, cat or human, have a tendency toward blood clotting disorders. When the formation of a clot takes too long, it puts them at risk of uncontrolled bleeding. But the other extreme is also dangerous; if blood clots too readily, it can lead to organ failure or even death if a clot goes to the lungs, brain or heart.

This latter condition, where blood clots to an excessive degree, is known as hypercoagulability. Despite its risks, veterinarians have few tools to identify patients experiencing it. With new findings from a retrospective study, a team at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine has found that a common diagnostic tool often used to identify patients at risk of bleeding may also be used to identify those predisposed to clot excessively.

The study was conducted by three clinicians in Penn Vet’s Department of Clinical Studies: lead author Jennifer Song, an intern at the time of the study and now a resident at The Ohio State University; Kenneth J. Drobatz, a professor of critical care and director of emergency services; and senior author Deborah C. Silverstein, an associate professor of critical care. Their work was published in the Journal of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care.

Two blood tests are commonly used to measure a dog’s ability to clot: prothrombin time, or PT, and activated partial thromboplastin time, or aPTT. These tests have an established normal reference range. Animals with results that are longer than normal are considered at risk of abnormal bleeding. However, when a clotting time was shorter than normal, clinicians have typically dismissed it.

“In the past,” Silverstein said, “we’ve always said, no, it’s probably that you pulled the sample incorrectly or the handling of the sample was inappropriate, even though logically you would think that a shorter time might indicate the animal is hypercoagulable.

“This study was attempting to say, can we actually use a shortened prothombin time or activated partial thromboplastin time to identify patients with hypercoagulability,” she added.

To do so, the Penn Vet team looked through the medical records of hundreds of dogs treated at Penn’s Ryan Veterinary Hospital between 2006 and 2011, searching for animals who had a diagnostic test called a TEG run. A TEG, or thromboelastogram, is considered the gold standard for evaluating clotting dynamics but is conducted on equipment that is expensive and not commonly found in primary veterinary practices. Of the 540 dogs the researchers considered, they found 23 that had a shortened PT or aPTT recorded in the same 24-hour period as the TEG test. Twenty-three other dogs with normal PT and aPTT served as a control group.

They then looked at the medical records for indications of a clinical finding of hypercoagulability, such as clots formed within the intravenous catheter or in the circulatory system, or of a suspected blood clot in the lungs, known as pulmonary thromboembolism.

Comparing these readings and clinical signs between the group of dogs with shortened PT or aPTT times and the control group, the researchers found statistically significant differences: more dogs with shortened PT and aPTT times had clinical signs of hypercoagulability and suspected pulmonary thromboembolism compared with the control group.

They also found a correlation between dogs with shortened PT and aPTT results and increased level of D-dimer, a protein fragment that is produced when a clot is being broken down.

“If your body is forming a lot of clots and is trying to break them down,” Silverstein said, “the D-dimer is a one of the metabolites from the clot that will appear in elevated levels in the blood. So seeing that animals that have shortened coagulation time also have elevated D-dimers was consistent with the suspicion that they might be hypercoagulable and therefore forming and breaking down excessive clots.”

Silverstein cautioned that the study was based on a relatively small group, but she finds the results compelling enough to push clinicians to consider further diagnostics and anti-coagulant treatment in certain high-risk cases.

“I think based on this retrospective study, we should pay more attention to shortened clotting times and look at them with a degree of diagnostic value,” she said. “In this patient population of critically ill dogs, it may help in identifying patients at risk of thrombosis.”

Silverstein would like to follow up on the work, looking at more animals and examining how different diseases may impact clotting risk. She’d also like to pursue a similar study in cats, a species susceptible to devastating arterial clots.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160519144852.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Biochemistry, Dogs, Internal Medicine (Cardiology)

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Second gene modifies effect of mutation in a dog model of ALS

Post author By Vetscite
Post date June 14, 2016

Degenerative Myelopathy is a naturally occurring, progressive adult onset disorder of the spinal cord that leads to paralysis and death. In 2009, a SOD1 mutation was associated with risk of developing the disease (link to previous press release). However, not all dogs with the mutation became affected, prompting the hypothesis that additional genes could modify disease risk.

Genome-wide association analysis comparing affected and unaffected PWC with the SOD1 mutation identified a haplotype within the gene ‘SP110 nuclear body protein’ that was associated with increased risk of developing DM and early age of onset.

We discovered several variants in SP110 that were more common in the PWCs that developed DM says Emma Ivansson, former PostDoc at Uppsala University leading the study.

Our functional studies revealed that the variants alter expression of SP110 in blood cells continues Sergey Kozyrev, senior scientist at Uppsala University.

Whether SP110 affects the risk of DM also in other dog breeds requires further investigation, says Kate Megquier, veterinarian and PhD student at Uppsala University and Broad Institute.

SP110 is a regulator of gene expression, mainly in immune cells. It is known that the immune response is important in neurodegeneration, but inflammation can be either protective or damaging and the exact mechanisms are still unclear.

Many studies have investigated the role of immunity in ALS, and our finding that a gene regulating the immune response is important in this canine model of ALS could provide a new angle says Emma Ivansson.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160516181035.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Genetics, Neurology

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* New veterinary research helps distinguish accidents from abuse

Post author By Vetscite
Post date June 14, 2016

A veterinarian sees a canine patient with severe rib and head injuries whose cause of injury is unknown. Without having witnessed the incident, how can the veterinary professional distinguish an accident from abuse?

Using data from criminal cases of animal abuse, researchers from Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) have demonstrated that motor vehicle accidents and non-accidental blunt force trauma cases in dogs and cats present with different types of injuries. The research, which appears online in advance of the September 2016 print edition of the Journal of Forensic Sciences, can help in the effort to uncover and address animal abuse.

While the veterinary community, health professionals and public officials have acknowledged the need to address animal cruelty and have developed general guidelines for identifying suspicious behavior, clinicians face many difficulties in identifying specific injuries caused by abuse.

In cases of injury caused by animal abuse, commonly referred to as non-accidental, the cause reported by the abuser typically differs from the actual cause. Motor vehicle accidents are often falsely cited when an animal presents with skeletal injuries.

The new study compared records from 50 criminal cases of abuse provided by the ASPCA’s Humane Law Enforcement Division with a sample of 426 motor vehicle accident cases from the Foster Hospital for Small Animals at Cummings School. It is the first study of its kind to look at two populations of animals with known causes of injuries.

“Our research has found that non-accidental injury and motor vehicle accidents cause different patterns of skeletal and soft tissue injury,” says one of the study’s lead authors, Nida Intarapanich, fourth-year veterinary student at Cummings School.

The researchers found that abused animals generally had more head injuries and rib fractures, as well as tooth fractures and claw damage. Pets involved in motor vehicle accidents tended to suffer skin abrasions or injuries in which the skin is torn from tissue, lung collapse and bruising, and hind end injury, which the researchers suggest could be a result of running away from a moving vehicle.

“To date there has been very little documentation in veterinary literature regarding the patterns of injury caused by humans harming an animal intentionally, and there is a need for greater awareness and knowledge,” says another author on the study, Emily McCobb, D.V.M, M.S., DACVAA, clinical assistant professor and director of the Shelter Medicine Program at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University.

A clear difference in rib fracture patterns was demonstrated, with abuse injuries generally causing fractures on both sides of the body, while rib fractures caused by motor vehicle accidents tended to appear on only one side of the body, with the ribs closer to the head more likely to fracture.

Researchers also found that victims of non-accidental injury were more likely to have evidence of older fractures, a pattern that is similarly seen in human abuse cases.

“The forensic veterinarian’s job is to use scientific evidence to tell the story of an animal victim of cruelty. This study serves as a valuable tool in that process,” says Robert Reisman, D.V.M., supervisor of forensic sciences, ASPCA Anti-Cruelty Group, who also collaborated on this research. “This study contributes to the expanding body of research in the growing field of veterinary forensic medicine and will help forensic veterinarians continue to give a voice to the voiceless.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160525101720.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, History

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Why Labrador retrievers are more interested in food than other breeds

Post author By Vetscite
Post date June 1, 2016

Dog owners tell their vets that Labrador retrievers are always interested in food, and new work shows there might be a biological truth to the claim. A May 3 study in Cell Metabolism links a gene alteration specifically found in Labs and related flat coat retrievers to greater food-motivated behavior, describing the first gene associated with canine obesity. The variation also occurs more frequently in Labradors chosen as assistance dogs, and might explain why these canines seem more trainable with food rewards.

Labrador retrievers are more interested in food and tend to be more obese than other breeds, regardless of owner. “Whenever there’s something more common in one breed than another, we think genetics are involved,” says Eleanor Raffan, a veterinary surgeon and geneticist at the University of Cambridge who previously studied human obesity before investigating the canine angle.

Starting with an initial cohort of 15 obese and 18 lean Labrador retrievers, Raffan and her colleagues selected three obesity-related genes to examine, all of which were known to affect weight in humans. This first analysis turned up a variation in a gene called POMC. In more of the obese dogs, a section of DNA was scrambled at the end of the gene. The deletion is predicted to hinder a dog’s ability to produce the neuropeptides β-MSH and β-Endorphin, which are usually involved in switching off hunger after a meal.

In humans, common variants in POMC have been associated with differences in body weight. “There are even some rare obese people who lack a very similar part of the POMC gene to that which is missing in the dogs,” says Stephen O’Rahilly, co-director of the Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Institute of Metabolic Science and a senior author on the study.

In a larger sample of 310 Labrador retrievers, Raffan and her colleagues discovered a host of canine behaviors associated with the POMC deletion. Not all Labs with the DNA variation were obese (and some were obese without having the mutation), but in general the deletion was associated with greater weight and, according to an owner survey, affected dogs were more food-motivated–they begged their owners for food more frequently, paid more attention at mealtimes, and scavenged for scraps more often. On average, the POMC deletion was associated with a 2 kg weight increase.

“We’ve found something in about a quarter of pet Labradors that fits with a hardwired biological reason for the food-obsessed behavior reported by owners,” says Raffan. “There are plenty of food-motivated dogs in the cohort who don’t have the mutation, but there’s still quite a striking effect.”

The researchers found that the POMC deletion occurs in roughly 23 percent of Labrador retrievers overall, based on further sampling of 411 dogs from the UK and US. Of 38 other breeds, the deletion only showed up again in flat coat retrievers, related to Labrador retrievers, and weight and behavior were similarly affected.

Notably, the POMC deletion was markedly more common in the 81 assistance Labrador retrievers included in the study, occurring in 76 percent of these dogs. “We had no initial reason to believe that the assistance dogs would be a different cohort,” says Raffan. “It was surprising. It’s possible that these dogs are more food-motivated and therefore more likely to be selected for assistance-dog breeding programs, which historically train using food rewards.”

But, Raffan cautions, the results could also be just a quirk of the data. “We haven’t yet looked at puppies and asked if they’re more likely to qualify as an assistance dog if they have the mutation,” she says.

The study adds to a growing body of knowledge about the biological reasons driving weight. “The behavior of dogs carrying this mutation is different,” says Raffan. “You can keep a dog with this mutation slim, but you have to be a lot more on-the-ball–you have to be more rigorous about portion control, and you have to be more resistant to your dog giving you the big brown eyes. If you keep a really food-motivated Labrador slim, you should give yourself a pat on the back, because it’s much harder for you than it is for someone with a less food-motivated dog.”

Moving forward, Raffan and her colleagues are also investigating the potential therapeutic implications for humans with obesity. The impacts of mutation in POMC have previously been difficult to research because in mice and rats, animals typically used to study obesity, the gene is quite different from the human version. “Further research in these obese Labradors may not only help the well-being of companion animals, but also carry important lessons for human health,” says O’Rahilly.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160503130342.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Behaviour (Ethology), Dogs, Genetics

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Changes in ‘microbiome’ during canine atopic dermatitis could lead to antibiotic-free therapies for human, canine disease

Post author By Vetscite
Post date June 1, 2016

Atopic dermatitis (AD), a chronic inflammatory skin condition and the most common form of eczema, is estimated to afflict as much as 10 percent of the U.S. population, and is much more common now than it was 50 years ago. Veterinary clinical estimates also show that approximately 10 percent of dogs have atopic dermatitis. How AD arises isn’t yet fully understood, but a new study from researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine, have uncovered important insights about the association of AD in dogs compared to humans. The study appears online in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

To a greater extent than mouse models, canine AD shares important features of the human version. For example, in both humans and dogs AD has been linked to abnormal blooms of Staphyloccocus bacteria on the skin — mostly Staphyloccocus aureus in humans, and Staphyloccocus pseudintermedius in dogs.

In the study, the research team, comprised of veterinary dermatologists, microbiologists, pathologists, and primary scientists, tracked the bacterial populations, or “microbiomes,” on dogs’ skin, and key properties of the skin’s barrier function during an occurrence of AD, and again after standard treatment with antibiotics. During the flare, researchers observed a sharp decrease in the diversity of the skin bacterial population as certain bacterial species proliferated, along with a decrease in the skin’s protective barrier. With antibiotic therapy, both measures returned to normal levels.

“In both canine and human atopic dermatitis we hypothesize there is a similar relationship among skin barrier function, the immune system, and microbes, even if the individual microbe species aren’t identical,” said senior author Elizabeth A. Grice, PhD, an assistant professor of Dermatology and Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “The hope is that insights gained from this study and others like it will enable us one day to treat this condition by altering the skin’s microbiome without antibiotics.”

Thirty-two dogs (15 with canine AD, and 17 without) from Penn Vet’s Ryan Hospital were enrolled in the study. On three occasions — first during AD flares in the affected dogs, then after 4-6 weeks of targeted antibiotics, and finally 4-6 weeks after treatment concluded — the team took swabs from several areas of skin on the affected dogs. They surveyed the microbiomes of these samples by amplifying and sequencing copies of a key bacterial gene whose DNA sequence is distinct for different bacterial species.

Samples from the dogs with ongoing AD had almost ten times the proportion of Staphylococcus species, compared to the control dogs. Corynebacterium species also rose, as they typically do in humans with AD. A standard measure of the diversity of the dogs’ skin microbiomes also decreased sharply, indicating that the abnormal bacterial proliferation — chiefly from S. pseudintermedius — had crowded out other, harmless or potentially beneficial bacterial species.

At the second visit, immediately following completion of antibiotic therapy, the abundance of Staphyloccocus and Corynebacterium on the skin of affected dogs and the diversity of their skin microbiome had returned almost to the levels seen in the control dogs. Those measures remained largely the same in the third visit, after antibiotic therapy was finished.

Impairment in the skin’s ability to work as a “barrier” to keep moisture in and harmful bacteria out is considered a possible factor in triggering or advancing AD. Under the guidance of Elizabeth Mauldin, DVM DACVP, DACVD, an associate professor of Dermatopathology in Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine, the researchers also tested skin barrier function in the dogs at each of their three visits. Results showed that the low-bacterial-diversity state of AD flares — corresponding to lesions of AD on the skin — correlated with impairments in the skin barrier, as indicated by a standard test of the water loss rate through the skin (TEWL).

“We don’t know if the bacterial overgrowth is weakening the skin’s barrier function or a weakening of the barrier is enabling the bacterial overgrowth, but we do know now that they’re correlated, and that’s a novel finding,” Grice said.

The research team is now conducting further studies of the microbiome in canine atopic dermatitis, in particular to determine how antimicrobial therapy promotes bacterial resistance.

“This investigation is a prime example of the One Health approach to research, a recognition that we’re dealing with the same disease processes in animals and in humans,” said lead author Charles Bradley, VMD, DACVP, a lecturer and dermatopathologist of pathobiology in Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine. “The findings highlight the importance of dogs as a model for human dermatitis and help lay the groundwork for new therapeutic strategies, for example involving microbiome transplants to compete with the harmful bacterial overgrowth, as an alternative to antibiotic therapy.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160425192814.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Human, Pharmacology

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New tech uses hardware, software to train dogs more efficiently

Post author By Vetscite
Post date June 1, 2016

North Carolina State University researchers have developed and used a customized suite of technologies that allows a computer to train a dog autonomously, with the computer effectively responding to the dog based on the dog’s body language.

“Our approach can be used to train dogs efficiently and effectively,” says David Roberts, an assistant professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a paper on the work. “We use sensors in custom dog harnesses to monitor a dog’s posture, and the computer reinforces the correct behavior quickly and with near-perfect consistency.”

“Because the technology integrates fundamental principles of animal learning into a computational system, we are confident it can be applied to a wide range of canine behaviors,” says Alper Bozkurt, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-author of the paper. “For example, it could be used to more quickly train service dogs. Ultimately, we think the technology will be used in conjunction with human-directed training.”

The dog harness fits comfortably onto the dog and is equipped with a variety of technologies that can monitor the dog’s posture and body language. Each harness also incorporates a computer the size of a deck of cards that transmits the sensor data wirelessly. The researchers published a paper about the harness’s potential applications in late 2014.

For the current study, the researchers wrote an algorithm that triggered a beeping sound and the release of dog treats from a nearby dispenser whenever the dog’s harness sensors detected that the dog went from standing to sitting.

The researchers had to ensure that the reinforcement was given shortly after the desired posture was exhibited, and also ensure that rewards were only given for the correct posture. This required a trade-off. If the algorithm ran long enough to ensure the correct posture with 100 percent certainty, the reinforcement was given too late to be effective for training purposes. But if the reinforcement was given immediately, there was a high rate of rewarding the wrong posture.

To address this, the researchers worked with 16 volunteers and their dogs to optimize the algorithm, finding the best possible combination of speed and accuracy. The researchers then compared the algorithm’s timing and accuracy to that of an expert human trainer.

The algorithm was highly accurate, rewarding the appropriate behavior 96 percent of the time. But the human trainer was better — with a 100 percent accuracy rate.

However, while the average response time was about the same for both algorithm and trainer, there was a lot of variation in the time of response from the trainer. The algorithm was incredibly consistent.

“That variation matters, because consistency is fundamentally important for all animal training,” Roberts says.

“This study was a proof of concept, and demonstrates that this approach works,” Bozkurt says. “Next steps include teaching dogs to perform specific behaviors on cue, and integrating computer-assisted training and human-directed training for use in various service dog applications.”

“In the long term, we’re interested in using this approach to animal-computer interaction to allow dogs to ‘use’ computers,” Roberts says. “For example, allowing an explosive detection dog to safely and clearly mark when it detects components of a bomb, or allowing diabetic alert dogs to use their physical posture and behaviors to call for help.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160502093707.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Behaviour (Ethology), Dogs

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* Rare human disease found in dogs

Post author By Vetscite
Post date June 1, 2016

A rare, severe form of pulmonary hypertension, which up until now, has only been classified as a human lung disease, has also been discovered in dogs according to a Michigan State University study.

“Our research is the first to document the existence of pulmonary veno-occlusive disease, or PVOD, in dogs,” said Kurt Williams, the lead author of the study and an expert in respiratory pathology in MSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “PVOD is considered one of the most severe forms of pulmonary hypertension.” The study is published in the journal Veterinary Pathology.

The number of pulmonary hypertension, or PH, cases reported in the United States is low, affecting 15 to 50 people per million each year. PVOD is diagnosed in only about 10 percent of PH cases where no other cause of the disease has been determined. Unfortunately, there are very few effective treatment options for PVOD and a lung transplant often becomes the best choice.

“PVOD might be more common in dogs than in people, but this has yet to be determined and needs to be looked at further,” Williams said.

Pulmonary hypertension develops because of abnormal blood vessels in the lungs, which makes it harder for the heart to push blood through and provide oxygen to the rest of the body. In cases of PVOD, the small veins in the lungs become blocked, increasing pressure in these blood vessels, and ultimately causing heart failure.

“The same process happens in canines,” Williams said. “These dogs also come in with similar symptoms as humans, yet because subtle changes in health may not be recognized as quickly in dogs, death can occur quickly once the animal is seen by a veterinarian.”

Symptoms include cough, increased rate of breathing, respiratory distress, loss of appetite and chronic fatigue. Fatal progression of the disease in humans can last up to two years.

“PVOD is a poorly understood disease not just because it’s so rare, but also because there’ve been no other animals known to have the disease,” Williams said. “Our finding changes things.”

Williams said that the discovery could be important for human medicine because the canine disease may serve as a model for human PVOD.

“It’s cases like this that help to remind us how important veterinary medicine is to medicine in general,” he said. “Our colleagues in the human medical community are becoming much more aware of the many diseases shared by our respective patients and how together we can learn from each other.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160512160654.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Human

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Study of glioma susceptibility in dogs may yield insights for humans

Post author By Vetscite
Post date June 1, 2016

A new study of the genetic factors underlying glioma formation in dogs may hold clues to how these common and often untreatable tumors form in humans. The genome study, which was conducted across 25 dog breeds, identified three genes associated with the tumor. The results from this research, led by Katarina Truvé of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Kerstin Lindblad-Toh of Uppsala University, were published on May 12 in PLOS Genetics.

Gliomas are the most common form of malignant primary brain tumors in humans and the second most common in dogs. Several dog breeds such as Boxer, Bulldog and Boston Terrier have an elevated risk of developing glioma, while certain related breeds do not, suggesting that a mix of genes may impact glioma formation. Dr Truvé says: “Researchers in the consortium are now continuing the analysis of the genes identified, and their functional roles in development and progression of glioma in both dogs and humans.”

To identify genetic variations that contribute to the tumor’s development, scientists performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) using blood samples from 39 dogs diagnosed with glioma and 141 control dogs. By screening for variations commonly found in dogs that developed gliomas, they pinpointed three genes highly associated with susceptibility to the tumor: CAMKK2, P2RX7 and DENR.

Two of these genes have additional links to cancer. Further experiments by the scientists showed that both human and canine gliomas express CAMKK2 at lower levels than normal brain tissue, and previous studies have shown that a variation of P2RX7 reduces protein function in dogs while other variations have been identified in cancer patients. Future investigation of all three genes may yield a better understanding of the causes and potential treatments of glioma in both dogs and humans.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160512145323.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Oncology

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* Surface mutation lets canine parvovirus jump to other species

Post author By Vetscite
Post date May 17, 2016

Canine parvovirus, or CPV, emerged as a deadly threat to dogs in the late 1970s, most likely the result of the direct transfer of feline panleukopenia or a similar virus from domesticated cats.

CPV has since spread to wild forest-dwelling animals, including raccoons, and the transfer of the virus from domesticated to wild carnivores has been something of a mystery.

“The underlying issue is, how do viruses jump from one animal to another and what controls viral host range?” said Colin Parrish, the John M. Olin Professor of Virology and director of the Baker Institute for Animal Health at Cornell University.

Parrish co-authored a research paper, published in the Journal of Virology, with Susan Daniel, associate professor in Cornell’s Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, which contends that a key mutation in the protein shell of CPV — a single amino acid substitution — plays a major role in the virus’ ability to infect hosts of different species.

That was a critical step,” he said. “It took a lot of changes to allow that to happen.”

He said another key factor in CPV’s infectivity is adhesion strengthening during TfR binding.

“There’s an initial attachment, which is probably relatively weak,” he said. “The thing just grabs on and holds on a little bit, sort of like using your fingertips. And then it looks like there’s a second attachment that is much stronger, where it’s like you grab on and hold on with both hands and won’t let go.”

“We think that the second event, this structural interaction that occurs in a small proportion of the binding cases, seems to be critical,” he said. “We think that it actually causes a change in the virus, that it triggers a small shift in the virus that actually makes it able to infect successfully.”

One of Daniel’s specialties is the investigation of chemically patterned surfaces that interact with soft matter, including biological materials such as cells, viruses, proteins and lipids. Her lab has pioneered a method called single-particle tracking — placing artificial cell membranes into microfluidics devices, fabricated at the CNF, to study the effect of single virus particles on a variety of membrane host receptors, in this case from both dogs and raccoons.

“The nice thing about these materials is that we can design them to have all different kinds of chemistries,” she said. “So in this particular study, we can put the receptor of interest in there, isolated from everything else so we can look at the specific effect of that receptor on a particular virus interaction.”

Daniel’s lab also developed the precision imaging devices used in the study. “Another piece of this paper is how the parvovirus actually sits down and binds even stronger over time with that receptor,” Daniel said. “That was kind of a new result that came out of the technique itself, being able to look at individual binding events.”

“When this virus infects a young animal, it can be fatal,” Parrish said. “It’s very unpleasant, and if you own a puppy or a kitten, that’s why you should vaccinate.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160414122007.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Cats, Dogs, Genetics

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* Analysis of dog genome will provide insight into human disease

Post author By Vetscite
Post date May 17, 2016

An important model in studying human disease, the non-coding RNA of the canine genome is an essential starting point for evolutionary and biomedical studies, according to a new study led by The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC).

New research published today in PLOS ONE reveals an improved annotation of microRNAs in the dog genome to further understand its biological role. Providing a platform for future studies into biomedicine, evolution and the domestication of important animals including dogs, cows, horses and pigs.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNA molecules that play a crucial role in regulating gene expression in animals and plants. Using the latest dog genome assembly and small RNA sequences of nine different dog tissues including skin, blood, ovaries and testes, scientists from TGAC have identified 91 novel miRNAs.

This discovery provides a significant opportunity not only to enhance our understanding of how miRNAs regulate a variety of biological processes in an important model species for studying human diseases, but can lead to further, similar research into the role that miRNAs play in animal domestication.

Lead researcher, Dr Luca Penso Dolfin from TGAC’s Vertebrate & Health Genomics Group, said: “As miRNAs are so important in orchestrating a variety of cellular processes, the discovery of these 91 novel miRNAs provides a vital starting point to explore their potentially major effects on gene regulation.”

Overall, 811 miRNAs were analysed by Dr Penso-Dolfin: 91 novel microRNA sequences and 720 conserved (that is, common to other organisms). Among these conserved loci, 207 had not previously been identified as canine microRNAs.

Dr Penso-Dolfin, added: “Our results represent a clear improvement in our knowledge of the dog genome, paving the way for further research on the evolution of gene regulation, and the contribution of microRNAs to pathological conditions. We are now looking at additional data for dog and a variety of farm animals, combining microRNA discovery to the investigation of their possible role in domestication.”

The domestic dog, Canis familiaris, is the result of wolf (Canis lupus) domestication, which started around 10,000 years ago. Since then, hundreds of dog breeds have been artificially selected, leading to very high levels of morphological and behavioural variation. Having shared the environment with humans ever since its appearance, the dog has been exposed to similar pathogens, and therefore represents an important model system for the study of human diseases.

The publication of the latest Canine genome build and annotation, CanFam3.1 provides an opportunity to enhance our understanding of gene regulation across tissues in the dog model system.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160427164134.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Genetics, Human

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* Canine influenza transmitted to cats in Midwestern shelter

Post author By Vetscite
Post date May 3, 2016

It may be called canine influenza, but Sandra Newbury, clinical assistant professor and director of the Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, has confirmed that the virus that sickened a large number of dogs in the Midwest last year has now infected a group of cats in the region.

Newbury, in collaboration with Kathy Toohey-Kurth, virology section head at the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, recently tested multiple cats at an animal shelter in Northwest Indiana and found them positive for the H3N2 canine influenza virus.

“Suspicions of an outbreak in the cats were initially raised when a group of them displayed unusual signs of respiratory disease,” Newbury says. “While this first confirmed report of multiple cats testing positive for canine influenza in the U.S. shows the virus can affect cats, we hope that infections and illness in felines will continue to be quite rare.”

Feline cases previously reported in South Korea suggested that the virus — which was not seen in the U.S. until 2015 — was capable of making the leap from dogs to cats. However, just one cat tested positive for H3N2 on a single occasion in the U.S. last year. In that case, no repeated sampling was done because the sample was not known to be positive until long after the cat’s symptoms had resolved.

It now appears the virus can replicate and spread from cat to cat. “Sequential sampling of these individual cats have shown repeated positives and an increase in viral loads over time,” Toohey-Kurth says, referring to the amount of virus found in any given sample.

Preliminary work to study the genetic signature of the virus shows it to be identical to the H3N2 virus that infects dogs. Researchers at WVDL are currently completing a full genetic analysis and study of the virus.

Newbury and the UW Shelter Medicine team are working closely with the animal shelter to manage the influenza outbreak. A number of dogs at the shelter have also tested positive for the virus.

“At this time, all of the infected cats have been quarantined, and no infected cats or dogs have left this shelter,” Newbury says. “We will continue to watch carefully for instances of the disease.”

Cats that have contracted the virus in the shelter have displayed upper respiratory symptoms such as runny nose, congestion and general malaise, as well as lip smacking and excessive salivation. Symptoms have resolved quickly and so far, the virus has not been fatal in cats.

Infected dogs may develop a persistent cough, runny nose and fever. Some dogs will show no symptoms, while others exhibit more severe signs of illness. The virus has been linked to some deaths in dogs, but most dogs recover with supportive care.

Dogs and cats infected with canine influenza virus should be housed separately from other animals and precautions should be taken to prevent spread of the virus on hands and clothing.

An H3N2 vaccine is now available for dogs, but no vaccine is currently approved or recommended for cats. A veterinarian can recommend whether or not to seek an H3N2 canine influenza vaccine for dogs.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160401080741.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Primates, Virology

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* Adversity forges unlikely friendship between hyenas, wolves

Post author By Vetscite
Post date April 20, 2016

Vladimir Dinets examined the unlikely friendship between striped hyenas (Hyaena hyaena) and grey wolves (Canis lupus) in the southern Negev, Israel. He suspects that the particularly inhospitable conditions of the extreme desert — and a need for food — might have pushed the two enemies into an unusual alliance.

It is often true in life that adversity makes humans more likely to lean on one another.

That theme of interdependence in hard times apparently holds true in the animal kingdom, according to a new study co-authored by a researcher from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Vladimir Dinets, UT assistant professor of psychology, examined the unlikely friendship between striped hyenas (Hyaena hyaena) and grey wolves (Canis lupus) in the southern Negev, Israel. He suspects that the particularly inhospitable conditions of the extreme desert — and a need for food — might have pushed the two enemies into an unusual alliance.

The study was recently published in the journal Zoology in the Middle East. Dinets co-authored the study with Beniamin Eligulashvili, an Israel-based zoologist. Dinets noted that humans can learn from the hyena-wolf partnership.

“Animal behavior is often more flexible than described in textbooks,” he said. “When necessary, animals can abandon their usual strategies and learn something completely new and unexpected. It’s a very useful skill for people, too.”

Hyenas and wolves are generally not friendly toward other carnivores. Hyenas fight epic battles with lions and African wild dogs, and take over kills that leopards and cheetahs have made. They easily kill domestic dogs, no matter the size, in one-on-one fights. Wolves hunt and kill lynxes, coyotes and even dogs, their closest relatives.

So Dinets and Eligulashvili were surprised when they observed striped hyenas–the little known, mostly solitary relatives of the better-known spotted hyenas of Africa–in the middle of grey wolf packs, moving together through a maze of canyons in the southern part of the Negev desert.

The researchers initially inferred this behavior from animal tracks. The second time, four years later, they observed it directly in the same approximate location. It is unknown if the same animals were involved in both cases. It is also unknown if this was a unique aberrant behavior or something happening regularly but never before recorded.

Dinets theorizes that both predators tolerated each other because they benefit from roaming the desert together. Wolves are more agile and can chase and take down all large animals of the region, while hyenas have an acute sense of smell and can locate carrion from many miles away. Hyenas also are better at digging out buried garbage and cracking open large bones and tin cans.

Both the grey wolf and the striped hyena are found in many geographic areas and overlap in many parts of Asia. But the southern Negev is the most arid place where both species are known to occur.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160317151307.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Behaviour (Ethology), Dogs

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Pit bull label may triple length of stay in dog shelters

Post author By Vetscite
Post date April 20, 2016

Dogs labelled as “pit bulls” may wait three times as long to be adopted from shelters than differently labelled lookalikes, according to a study published March 23, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Lisa Gunter from Arizona State University, USA, and colleagues.

Previous research had suggested that certain types of dogs take longer to be adopted from shelters, but it was unclear how much breed identification influenced adoption decisions. Since pit bull breeds are often negatively perceived, the authors of this study wanted to know if the “pit bull” label affects adoption.

The authors initially assessed perceptions of pit bull dogs compared to other breeds. They then analysed the effect of the “pit bull” breed label in dog shelters by surveying the perceived attractiveness to potential adopters, based on factors including perceived friendliness, aggressiveness and intelligence, of dogs labelled as pit bull breeds and of differently labelled lookalikes. They also examined length of stay in shelters.

They found that pit bull breeds were perceived by study participants as less adoptable than other breeds such as Labradors, considered less friendly and more aggressive. In shelters, compared to lookalikes that were unlabelled or labelled as other breeds, dogs labelled as “pit bull” breeds were again seen as less ‘attractive’, and waited over three times as long as lookalikes to be adopted.

Lisa Gunter notes: “We were surprised how very similar looking dogs sometimes get labelled “pit bull” and other times as something completely different. These dogs may look and act the same, but the pit bull label damns them to a much longer wait to adoption.”

Assigned breed labels can be inaccurate, based on sometimes misleading appearances, and this research may indicate that dogs could be inadvertently penalised when labelled as a pit bull breed. The authors state that removing breed labels seems to be an easy way to improve the experience of pit bull type dogs in animal shelters.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160323151835.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Behaviour (Ethology), Dogs

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Increase in the number of dog attacks on guide dogs in the UK

Post author By Vetscite
Post date April 6, 2016

Reported dog attacks on guide dogs have risen significantly over a five year period, finds a study published online in the journal Veterinary Record.

A total of 629 attacks were reported between 2010 and 2015, with an increase from an average of three per month in 2010 to eleven attacks per month in 2015. The authors say it is not clear whether this reflects higher levels of reporting or a real trend.

There are around 4,900 working guide dogs in the UK. They provide mobility and support for blind and partially sighted people. Each dog is supported by the charity ‘Guide Dogs’.

Dog attacks on guide dogs are common, and these can have a significant impact on the dog, and the owner’s mobility, independence and social and emotional well-being.

Attacks are treated as an aggravated offence with sentences of up to three years imprisonment for the attacking dog’s owner, under the 2014 Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act.

In this study, a team of researchers from Guide Dogs and the University of Nottingham examined data on all dog attacks on Guide Dogs’ stock between June 2010 and February 2015. They examined the characteristics of the attacks, impact on the dog and owner, as well as the financial implications for the charity.

A dog attack was defined as “when a dog sets upon another dog in a forceful, violent, hostile or aggressive way, involving physical contact.”

They found that a total of 629 attacks were reported during the 56 month period. A total of 97% of attacks occurred in public areas and 55% of victim dogs were working in harness when they were attacked. Owners of the aggressor dogs were present in 77% of attacks.

Attacks were described as being unprovoked in 19% of cases, caused by the aggressor dog in 22% of cases, and caused by a lack of control in 29% of cases.

“The guide dog harness is designed to be visible and should have been apparent to the owners of aggressors who were present,” explain the authors. “It is feasible that a proportion of these attacks could have been avoided if the aggressor was put on a lead when the owner saw the guide dog in harness.”

Guide Dogs’ stock were injured in 43% of attacks and related veterinary costs were estimated to be £34,514.30. Injuries received were most commonly puncture wounds, and veterinary attention was required for 76% of dogs with injuries and a further 5% needed a check up.

Over 40% of qualified guide dogs’ experienced a negative impact on working ability, and less than 20% of qualified guide dogs were unable to work for a period of time.

Twenty dogs were permanently withdrawn from the Guide Dogs’ programme as a result of the attacks. Thirteen were fully qualified and working with guide dog owners, and this resulted in a financial cost of more than £600,000 to the charity.

Dog attacks resulted in physical injuries to 13.8% people, of which 68% were guide dog owners, and 47% required medical attention. The victim dog handlers also reported that their emotional well-being had been affected in 70% of attacks, including 39% feeling anxious, 35% feeling shaken and 30% feeling upset.

The authors say that the overall costs of veterinary treatment and replacement dogs are “estimated to be more than £650,000, but the impacts of the attacks on the guide dog owner are more important.”

They conclude the impact “for the guide dog owners of these dogs are likely to be long-term and complex affecting not only their mobility and physical health, but also their social and emotional well-being.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160304092008.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Behaviour (Ethology), Dogs, Policy

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* Magnetoreception molecule found in the eyes of dogs, primates

Post author By Vetscite
Post date March 22, 2016

Dog-like carnivores, some primate species may have a magnetic compass similar to that of birds. Cryptochromes are light-sensitive molecules that exist in bacteria, plants and animals. In animals, they are involved in the control of the body’s circadian rhythms. In birds, cryptochromes are also involved in the light-dependent magnetic orientation response based on Earth’s magnetic field: cryptochrome 1a is located in photoreceptors in birds’ eyes and is activated by the magnetic field. Now researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt have also detected cryptochrome 1 in photoreceptors in several mammalian species. Therefore, it is possible that these animals also have a magnetic sense that is linked to their visual system.

The perception of Earth’s magnetic field is used by many animal species for orientation and navigation. A magnetic sense is found in some insects, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals, whereas humans do not appear to be able to perceive Earth’s magnetic field.

The magnetic sense in migratory birds has been studied in considerable detail: unlike a boy scout’s compass, which shows the compass direction, a bird’s compass recognizes the inclination of the magnetic field lines relative to Earth’s surface. Surprisingly, this inclination compass in birds is linked to the visual system as the magnetic field activates the light-sensitive molecule cryptochrome 1a in the retina of the bird’s eye. Cryptochrome 1a is located in the blue- to UV-sensitive cone photoreceptors and only reacts to the magnetic field if it is simultaneously excited by light.

Together with colleagues from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, the Goethe University Frankfurt, and the Universities of Duisburg-Essen and Göttingen, Christine Nießner and Leo Peichl from the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt investigated the presence of cryptochrome 1 in the retinas of 90 species of mammal. Mammalian cryptochrome 1 is the equivalent of bird cryptochrome 1a. With the help of antibodies against the light-activated form of the molecule, the scientists found cryptochrome 1 only in a few species from the carnivore and primate groups. As is the case in birds, it is found in the blue-sensitive cones in these animals. The molecule is present in dog-like carnivores such as dogs, wolves, bears, foxes and badgers, but is not found in cat-like carnivores such as cats, lions and tigers. Among the primates, cryptochrome 1 is found in the orang-utan, for example. In all tested species of the other 16 mammalian orders, the researchers found no active cryptochrome 1 in the cone cells of the retina.

The active cryptochrome 1 is found in the light-sensitive outer segments of the cone cells. It is therefore unlikely that it controls the animals’ circadian rhythms from there, as this control occurs in the cell nucleus which is located a considerable distance away. It is also unlikely that cryptochrome 1 acts as an additional visual pigment for colour perception. The researchers thus suspect that some mammals may use the cryptochrome 1 to perceive Earth’s magnetic field. In evolutionary terms, the blue cones in mammals correspond to the blue-to UV-sensitive cones in birds. It is therefore entirely possible that the cryptochrome 1 in mammals has a comparable function.

Observations of foxes, dogs and even humans actually indicate that they can perceive Earth’s magnetic field. For example, foxes are more successful at catching mice when they pounce on them in a north-east direction. “Nevertheless, we were very surprised to find active cryptochrome 1 in the cone cells of only two mammalian groups, as species whose cones do not contain active cryptochrome 1, for example some rodents and bats, also react to the magnetic field,” says Christine Nießner.

One possible explanation for this is that animals can also perceive the magnetic field in a different way: for example, with the help of magnetite, microscopic ferrous particles in cells. A magnetite-based magnetic sense functions like a pocket compass and does not require any light. Mole rats, which live in lightless tunnel systems, orient using this kind of compass. Birds also have an additional orientation mechanism based on magnetite, which they use to determine their position.

Many fundamental questions remain open in the research on the magnetic sense. Future studies will have to reveal whether the cryptochrome 1 in the blue cones is also part of a magnetic sense in mammals or whether it fulfils other tasks in the retina.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160225105221.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Ophthalmology, Primates

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* Newly found genomic causes of severe compulsiveness in dogs could aid study of human OCD

Post author By Vetscite
Post date March 22, 2016

Research led by investigators in veterinary and human medicine has identified genetic pathways that exacerbate severity of canine compulsive disorder in Doberman pinschers, a discovery that could lead to better therapies for obsessive compulsive disorder in people. The discovery appears online in advance of print on Feb. 29, 2016 in the International Journal of Applied Research in Veterinary Medicine.

“Dogs naturally suffer complex diseases, including mental disorders that are similar to those in humans. Among those is canine compulsive disorder (CCD), the counterpart to human obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD),” says the study’s first and corresponding author Nicholas Dodman, BVMS, DACVA, DACVB, professor in clinical sciences and section head and program director of animal behavior at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University.

OCD is one of the world’s most common neuropsychiatric disorders, affecting an estimated 1 to 3 percent of people and listed by the World Health Organization as among the 20 most disabling diseases. OCD is often characterized by distressing thoughts and time-consuming, repetitive behaviors, while canine compulsions may include repetitive tail chasing, excessive grooming and flank and blanket sucking. Current OCD therapies are not as effective as they could be; medicinal treatment benefits only about half of all human patients. No previously recorded study in humans or dogs has addressed the factors that drive severity in OCD and CCD.

“Genomic research on human neuropsychiatric disorders can be challenging due to the genetic heterogeneity of disease in humans,” says neurologist Edward Ginns, MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry, neurology, pediatrics and clinical pathology, and director, program in medical genetics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a co-author on the new study. “Canine compulsive disorder shares behavioral hallmarks, pharmacological responsiveness, and brain structural homology with human OCD, and thus is expected to be an important animal model.”

The research team compared whole genome sequencing of 70 Doberman pinschers to search for inherited factors that exacerbate CCD. Researchers identified two loci on chromosomes that were strongly correlated with severe CCD, as well as a third locus that showed evidence of association.

The locus most strongly associated with severe CCD was found on chromosome 34 — a region containing three serotonin receptor genes.

“This is particularly significant because drugs that work on the serotonin system are the mainstay treatment for OCD in humans, which demonstrates further correlation between the human and animal models,” says Dodman.

The second locus significantly correlated with severe CCD was on chromosome 11, the same chromosome that contains a gene thought to increase the risk of schizophrenia in humans. This discovery, along with suggestive evidence found on chromosome 16 linking CCD to stress tolerance, may also be relevant to the pathophysiology of OCD, according to the study authors. “Comparative genomics is a particularly attractive approach to reveal the molecular underpinnings of disease in inbred animals with the hope of gaining new insights into these diseases in dogs and humans,” says Ginns.

The study builds on more than a decade of research from Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and the University of Massachusetts Medical School that in 2010 initially found the neural cadherin (CDH2) gene on canine chromosome 7 appeared to coincide with an increased risk of OCD. Additionally, 2013 MRI research from Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University and McLean Imaging Center at McLean Hospital showed that the structural brain abnormalities of Doberman pinschers afflicted with canine compulsive disorder (CCD) were similar to those of humans with OCD.

“If the canine construct is fully accepted by other OCD researchers, this spontaneously-occurring model of the condition in humans, right down to the biological pathways involved, could help point the way to novel and more effective treatments for such a debilitating condition,” Dodman says.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160226125311.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Behaviour (Ethology), Dogs, Genetics

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* Mensa mutts? Dog IQ tests reveal canine ‘general intelligence’

Post author By Vetscite
Post date March 8, 2016

Dogs have measurable IQs, like people, suggests new research from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the University of Edinburgh.

The research, published in the journal Intelligence, looked at whether dog intelligence is structured in a similar way as in humans. When IQ, or ‘general intelligence’, is tested in people, individuals tend to perform comparably across different types of cognitive tasks — those who do well in one type of task, tend to do well in others.

The researchers created a proto-type dog ‘IQ test’ which they used to assess the intelligence of 68 working border collies. These tests included: navigation, tested by timing how long it took the dogs to get food that was behind different types of barriers; assessing whether they could tell the difference between quantities of food and; their ability to follow a human pointing gesture to an object.

The researchers found that dogs that did well on one test tended be better at the other tests. Furthermore, dogs that did tests faster were likely to do them more accurately.

Dr Rosalind Arden, a Research Associate at LSE, said: “Just as people vary in their problem solving abilities, so do dogs, even within one breed. This is significant because in humans there is a small but measureable tendency for people who are brighter to be healthier and live longer. So if, as our research suggests, dog intelligence is structured similarly to ours, studying a species that doesn’t smoke, drink, use recreational drugs and does not have large differences in education and income, may help us understand this link between intelligence and health better.

“In addition, dogs are one of the few animals that reproduce many of the key features of dementia, so understanding their cognitive abilities could be valuable in helping us to understand the causes this disorder in humans and possibly test treatments for it.”

The suite of tests was conducted in under an hour per dog, which is comparable with the time it takes a person to do an IQ-type test. Previous research on canine cognitive abilities has taken much longer to administer.

Dr Mark Adams, Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, said: “This is only a first step, but we are aiming to create a dog IQ test that is reliable, valid and can be administered quickly. Such a test could rapidly improve our understanding of the connection between dog intelligence, health, even lifespan, and be the foundation of ‘dognitive epidemiology’

“Dogs are excellent for this kind of work because they are willing to participate and seem to enjoy taking part.”

In order to get a large sample of dogs from similar backgrounds the researchers recruited working border collies, which meant that there weren’t big differences in how they were raised. The dogs were tested at Kinloch Sheepdogs.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160207203445.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Neurology

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* Forensic odorology scientifically validated

Post author By Vetscite
Post date March 8, 2016

Odorology is a technique that uses specially-trained dogs to identify human scent. It is used in police investigations to establish that an individual has been at the scene of a crime. However, there is no international norm on how these dogs are trained. At the Centre de recherche en neurosciences de Lyon (CNRS/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1/Inserm), researchers specializing in scents and their memorization have analyzed data, provided since 2003 by the Division of the Technical and Scientific Police (DTSP, Ecully) on dog performances in scent identification tasks. Their results show that, at the end of a 24-month training program, the dogs are able to recognize the smell of an individual in 80-90% of cases and never mistake it for that of another. These findings validate the procedures that are currently in use and should convince the international community of the reliability of this method. This work was published on 10 February 2016 in the journal PLOS ONE.

Odorology, or the science of smells, is a method of identifying human scents. It has been used in France since 2003 in police investigations to establish that an individual has been present at a crime scene. The method is based on the fact that each person has their own scent and relies on the powerful canine sense of smell (which can be 200 to 10,000 times more sensitive than that of a human being). It involves a long period of dog training.

This technique consists in using a specially-trained dog to compare a human scent collected from an object found at a crime scene with scents from several people, including that of a suspect or victim. As the results of these tests are of critical importance for investigators, they need to be obtained through viable and reproducible methods. However, there are no internationally recognized norms for the training of these dogs or for their inclusion in investigations — hence the occasional reluctance to treat their evidence as proof. By analyzing results collected since 2003 at the Division of the Technical and Scientific Police (DTSP, Ecully), researchers from the Centre de recherche en neurosciences de Lyon have succeeded in demonstrating the viability of the technique used.

During basic training, the German and Belgian shepherd police dogs must learn to make the link between two scents from the same individual through the completion of increasingly complex tasks. By the end of this training, the dogs are able to carry out identification exercises during which they sniff a reference human scent and then compare it with five different human odors, one of which is the reference scent. When a dog matches the scent in the jar to the reference one (which it shows by lying down in front of the correct jar) it is rewarded with a treat or a game. The human odors may consist of traces collected from an object that someone has touched or of a scent collected directly from a person.

The analysis of the data obtained with the 13 DTSP dogs since 2003 shows that after they have learned the task’s principles, 24 months of regular training is necessary for stable and optimal performances. At the end of the first twelve months, the dogs no longer made any recognition errors, i.e., they did not confuse the scent of one person with that of another. Furthermore, their olfactory sensitivity increased significantly over the training period: on average, after two years, the dogs managed to recognize two scents from the same person in 85% of cases. The remaining 15% of cases in which no match was obtained, were mostly the result of poor scent sampling rather than poor recognition.

The researchers also found that German shepherds were better than Belgian shepherds, undoubtedly because they are more disciplined and attentive.

At the end of their basic training, the dogs are able to participate in criminal cases and receive continuing training throughout their lives. In practice, each identification test is carried out by at least two dogs. Additionally, each dog performs at least two tests with the same panel of scents: the collected scent is presented either as a sample to be sniffed at the start of the task, or in one of the jars that the dog sniffs successively. Between 2003 and 2016, odorology was used in 522 cases at the SDPTS and helped to resolve 162 cases.

In these criminal cases, the sampled scents were only a few hours or days old. The researchers now want to study how the dogs perform on older scents. Scent samples can in fact be stored in scent libraries over several years.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160212102429.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Dogs, Neurology

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Inhibitory control may affect physical problem solving in pet dogs

Post author By Vetscite
Post date March 8, 2016

Inhibitory control may be an indicator of a dog’s ability to solve a problem, according to a study published February 10, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Corsin Müller from the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna and colleagues.

Playing with objects may help dogs learn about their environment, similar to how it helps human infants. Scientists think dogs’ inhibitory control, or the ability to inhibit or regulate attentional or emotional responses, may play a role in their individual differences in physical problem-solving task performance.

The authors of this study investigated the effects of pet dogs’ experiences interacting with the physical environment and their individual differences in inhibitory control on their physical problem-solving ability. A cohort of ~40 pet Border Collie dogs were assigned to three different conditions, and tested in an intensive series of inhibitory control tasks, such as wait-for-treat, and cognitive measures, such as size constancy over a period of 18 months.

The authors found that differences in previous object-related experiences do not explain variability in performance in problem solving tasks. Depending on the cognitive task, inhibitory control had a positive or a negative effect on performance and turned out to be the best predictors of individual performance in the different tasks. The authors think that dogs likely do not transfer knowledge about physical rules from one physical problem-solving task to another, but rather approach each task as a novel problem. In addition, individual performance in these tasks may be influenced by the subject’s level of inhibitory control.

The authors suggest that studying the interplay between inhibitory control and problem-solving performance may make an important contribution to our understanding of individual and species differences in physical problem-solving performance.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/ Science Daily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160210165707.htm Original web page at Science Daily

Tags Behaviour (Ethology), Dogs