Travel medicine of parasitic diseases in the dog

Companion animals are increasingly brought along by their owners to foreign countries. Thus, small animal travel medicine is becoming more important. The field includes both prophylaxis and metaphylaxis against various infectious diseases, as well as their diagnosis and treatment. Dogs returning from Southern Europe, but also from more tropical regions, may be infected with exotic pathogens. In addition, imported pedigree or working dogs, and especially stray dogs imported through welfare organisations, are at high risk.The present overview summarises the clinical and practical aspects of exotic parasitic diseases that may affect such dogs, and the risk of such diseases becoming autochthonously transmitted in Switzerland. Furthermore, the zoonotic potential of these infections will be considered.

Treatment-naive individuals are the major source of transmitted HIV-1 drug resistance in men who have sex with men in the Swiss HIV Cohort Study

BACKGROUND Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) transmitted drug resistance (TDR) can compromise antiretroviral therapy (ART) and thus represents an important public health concern. Typically, sources of TDR remain unknown, but they can be characterized with molecular epidemiologic approaches. We used the highly representative Swiss HIV Cohort Study (SHCS) and linked drug resistance database (SHCS-DRDB) to analyze sources of TDR. METHODS ART-naive men who have sex with men with infection date estimates between 1996 and 2009 were chosen for surveillance of TDR in HIV-1 subtype B (N = 1674), as the SHCS-DRDB contains pre-ART genotypic resistance tests for >69% of this surveillance population. A phylogeny was inferred using pol sequences from surveillance patients and all subtype B sequences from the SHCS-DRDB (6934 additional patients). Potential sources of TDR were identified based on phylogenetic clustering, shared resistance mutations, genetic distance, and estimated infection dates. RESULTS One hundred forty of 1674 (8.4%) surveillance patients carried virus with TDR; 86 of 140 (61.4%) were assigned to clusters. Potential sources of TDR were found for 50 of 86 (58.1%) of these patients. ART-naive patients constitute 56 of 66 (84.8%) potential sources and were significantly overrepresented among sources (odds ratio, 6.43 [95% confidence interval, 3.22-12.82]; P < .001). Particularly large transmission clusters were observed for the L90M mutation, and the spread of L90M continued even after the near cessation of antiretroviral use selecting for that mutation. Three clusters showed evidence of reversion of K103N or T215Y/F. CONCLUSIONS Many individuals harboring viral TDR belonged to transmission clusters with other Swiss patients, indicating substantial domestic transmission of TDR in Switzerland. Most TDR in clusters could be linked to sources, indicating good surveillance of TDR in the SHCS-DRDB. Most TDR sources were ART naive. This, and the presence of long TDR transmission chains, suggests that resistance mutations are frequently transmitted among untreated individuals, highlighting the importance of early diagnosis and treatment.

DNA-based diagnosis of rare diseases in veterinary medicine: a 4.4 kb deletion of ITGB4 is associated with epidermolysis bullosa in Charolais cattle.

BACKGROUND Rare diseases in livestock animals are traditionally poorly diagnosed. Other than clinical description and pathological examination, the underlying causes have, for the most part, remained unknown. A single case of congenital skin fragility in cattle was observed, necropsy, histological and ultrastructural examinations were carried out and whole genome sequencing was utilized to identify the causative mutation. RESULTS A single purebred female Charolais calf with severe skin lesions was delivered full-term and died spontaneously after birth. The clinical and pathological findings exactly matched the gross description given by previous reports on epitheliogenesis imperfecta and epidermolysis bullosa (EB) in cattle. Histological and ultrastructural changes were consistent with EB junctionalis (EBJ). Genetic analysis revealed a previously unpublished ITGB4 loss-of-function mutation; the affected calf was homozygous for a 4.4 kb deletion involving exons 17 to 22, and the dam carried a single copy of the deletion indicating recessive inheritance. The homozygous mutant genotype did not occur in healthy controls of various breeds but some heterozygous carriers were found among Charolais cattle belonging to the affected herd. The mutant allele was absent in a representative sample of unrelated sires of the German Charolais population. CONCLUSION This is the first time in which a recessively inherited ITGB4 associated EBJ has been reported in cattle. The identification of heterozygous carriers is of importance in avoiding the transmission of this defect in future. Current DNA sequencing methods offer a powerful tool for understanding the genetic background of rare diseases in domestic animals having a reference genome sequence available.

Medical image computing in diagnosis and intervention of spinal diseases

Spinal image analysis and computer assisted intervention have emerged as new and independent research areas, due to the importance of treatment of spinal diseases, increasing availability of spinal imaging, and advances in analytics and navigation tools. Among others, multiple modality spinal image analysis and spinal navigation tools have emerged as two keys in this new area. We believe that further focused research in these two areas will lead to a much more efficient and accelerated research path, avoiding detours that exist in other applications, such as in brain and heart.

DIMETER: a haptic master device for tremor diagnosis in neurodegenerative diseases

In this study, a device based on patient motion capture is developed for the reliable and non-invasive diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases. The primary objective of this study is the classification of differential diagnosis between Parkinson's disease (PD) and essential tremor (ET). The DIMETER system has been used in the diagnoses of a significant number of patients at two medical centers in Spain. Research studies on classification have primarily focused on the use of well-known and reliable diagnosis criteria developed by qualified personnel. Here, we first present a literature review of the methods used to detect and evaluate tremor; then, we describe the DIMETER device in terms of the software and hardware used and the battery of tests developed to obtain the best diagnoses. All of the tests are classified and described in terms of the characteristics of the data obtained. A list of parameters obtained from the tests is provided, and the results obtained using multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural networks are presented and analyzed.

The physician's vade-mecum : containing the symptoms, causes, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of diseases, accompanied by a select collection of formulae and a glossary of terms /

Mode of access: Internet.

Syphilitic diseases : their pathology, diagnosis, and treatment, including experimental researches on inoculation as a differential agent in testing the character of these affections /

Mode of access: Internet.

Diseases transmitted from animals to man,

Bibliography at end of each chapter.

The diseases of the ear : their diagnosis and treatment : a textbook of aural surgery in the form of academical lectures /

Mode of access: Internet.

The pathology, diagnosis and treatment of diseases of women, including the diagnosis of pregnancy,

Mode of access: Internet.