MOTION SENSORS DETECTS LAMENESS IN HORSES.

A research carried out in the university of Missouri-Columbia has come up with a motion sensor called a lameness locator that effectively detects lameness faster than the subjective eye-test. The study published in the Equine Veterinary Journal, Keegan and co-author Meghan McCracken, an equine surgery resident at MU, put special adjustable shoes on horses that temporarily induced symptoms of lameness. The horses were then monitored by the Lameness Locator as well as by a number of veterinarians using any lameness testing methods they wished. If no lameness was detected by either the veterinarians or the Lameness Locator, the special shoes were adjusted slightly to increase the symptoms of lameness. This process was repeated until both the Lameness Locator and the participating veterinarians properly identified in which leg of the horse the lameness was occurring. Keegan and McCracken found that the Lameness Locator was able to correctly identify lameness earlier than veterinarians using subjective eye test methods more than 58 percent of the time and more than 67 percent of the time when the lameness occurred in the hind legs of the horse. Keegan attributes this to the sensors' high sensitivity levels. There are two reasons why the Lameness Locator is better than the naked eye, It samples motion at a higher frequency beyond the capability of the human eye and it removes the bias that frequently accompanies human subjective evaluation. The most common ailment to affect a horse is lameness , equine lameness may begin subtly and can range from a simple mild problem affecting a single limb to a more complicated one affecting multiple limbs, veterinarians and horse owners know that early detection is the key to successful outcomes.If veterinarians can detect lameness earlier, before it gets too bad, it makes treatment much easier. Lameness often goes undetected or undiagnosed entirely, which can cause owners to retire horses earlier than needed, simply because they cannot figure out why the horses are unhealthy. The Lameness Locator, which is now in commercial use, places small sensors on the horse's head, right front limb and croup, near the tail. The sensors monitor and record the horse's torso movement while the horse is trotting. The recorded information is then transferred to a computer or mobile device and compared against databases recorded from the movement of healthy horses and other lame horses. The computer is then able to diagnose whether or not the horse is lame. diagnostic kits # sensor # equine health # computer

FOODS DANGEROUS TO PETS.

CAPSULE ENDOSCOPY AS A DIAGNOSTIC TOOL IN HORSES.

A new technique has been developed to ease diagnosis issues in horses,the procedure uses a camera pill to aid visualization of the gut. The research was carried out by veterinary researcher Dr. Julia Montgomery in the U of S Western College of Veterinary Medicine. Montgomery worked with equine surgeon Dr. Joe Bracamonte and Khan Wahid, a specialist in health informatics and imaging in the College of Engineering. The team used an endoscopy capsule about the size and shape of a vitamin pill with a camera to have a look inside a horse. The capsule pill endoscopy offers a powerful new tool to diagnose diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease and cancer, or to check surgical sites. Researchers could use it to see how well drugs to stimulate bowel action are working, or to answer basic questions such as determining what normal small intestine function looks like. The advantage of this method of diagnosis is that the inside of the horse can be viewed and a better understanding gained as to the normal operations of the intestine,with little or no stress to the animal. The other forms of diagnosis prior to this are endoscopy,exploratory surgery, or laparascopy. The "camera pills" have been in use for human medicine for some time, but have just been used in equine health. The team used in the horse by administering the capsule through a stomach tube directly to the horse's stomach. The journey down the track was noted for the next eight hours, as the capsule and its camera made its way through the horse's small intestine, offering a continuous picture of what was going on. This will really ease diagnosis issues and speed up treatment in horses,thus ensuring equine health is maintained when eventually available.The team plans to run more tests in the next few months on different horses to gather more data so as to provide capsule pill specific to the horses. diagnosis# diagnostic kits# equine health # data #

Poultry vaccines nullify antibiotic need

Poultry vaccines nullify antibiotic need: The Ceva Poultry Vaccinology Summit in Barcelona has said vaccines, not antibiotics, are the long-term solution to the prevention of dangerous poultry diseases like avian influenza (AI).

Ukraine hit with African swine fever

Ukraine hit with African swine fever: A farm in the Kirovograd region of Ukraine has had to slaughter more than a dozen pigs after the African swine fever (ASF) disease was detected by health officials this week.

Alzheimer's could be treated with lab grown neural networks.

A team from Rutgers University, in a study published in Nature Communications, states that neuro-degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's could be treated with the help of a new, lab-grown, neural network. This is done by injecting neural networks into damaged mice brains a process that could help with treatment of such diseases.The process, which researchers refer to as "3D micro-scaffolding", has several stages. Neurons are grown in a lab by exposing stem cells to proteins, meaning they develop into neurons. These neurons grow inside the 'scaffold' of polymer fibres and are subsequently injected, as a network, into the brain. Several neurons, and neural networks, were injected into diseased mice brains. The researchers found that networks, rather than individual neurons, were far better at surviving in the brain - 40 percent more likely to survive, in some cases.This is a promising new platform that could make the transplantation of neurons a viable treatment for a broad range of human neuro-degenerative disorders . Though the team is as yet unsure how the neural networks will prevent the progression of the disease, they are hopeful that it will help treat the damage caused by degenerative diseases. culled from wired.co.uk

BIOTEMPUS AND CANCER TREATMENT IN DOGS.

Melbourne based biotechnology company Biotempus has made a remarkable discovery: cancer patients’ [both canine and human] immune systems run on a cycle and thus delivering treatment at the wrong times could be reducing the efficacy. Dr Noam Pik, the general manager at ASAP Laboratory, explained they hypothesised that a seven-day cycle was the key to the efficacy of treatment by building on previous medical research. “This discovery was made by Martin Ashdown while investigating AIDS with mice after noticing some responded better to the same treatment at different times post inoculation,” said Dr Pik. “This lead to the hypothesis that the immune system operates differently in the time domain. That is, at certain times it is more effective at eliminating disease.” Read more here; vetpracticemag.com.au/on-the-cusp-of-a-breakthrough/