The influence of feeding regimen on body condition in the cat was studied in a sample of the UK domestic cat population (n = 136). Data were collected by interviewing cat owners and assessing body condition of cats in the owners' homes. Four main factors were identified which were related to body condition. These were, in descending order of significance: neuter status, age, frequency of treat feeding, and ad libitum feeding. Feeding regimen as a risk factor in feline obesity is discussed.

Animal Feed↗

PubMed2000

Veterinary research at the Central Veterinary Laboratory, Weybridge, with special reference to scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

A Veterinary Laboratory Service was commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food of the United Kingdom in 1894 and the Service commenced veterinary research in 1905. The Central Veterinary Laboratory (CVL) was opened in 1917 and has become known world-wide under the name 'Weybridge'. In 1922, a network of Veterinary Investigation Centres was established in England and Wales and these continue to make an important contribution to surveillance for animal diseases. Problems recognised at these centres provide an important stimulus for research at the CVL, a good example being the case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Research into many non-infectious and infectious diseases is conducted, and research into scrapie was already in progress when BSE was discovered in 1986. A research programme was commenced to investigate the clinical signs, diagnostic methods, pathology, pathogenesis and epidemiology of BSE and the transmission characteristics of the BSE agent in farm animals. Some of the results of these studies and prospects for the future are discussed.

Animals↗

PubMed1999

Maternally inherited nonsyndromic hearing loss.

In this study we characterized clinically and evaluated molecularly a large family with maternally inherited hearing impairment. Relatives were evaluated audiologically and clinically, the most likely pattern of inheritance was deduced, and molecular DNA analysis for the known mitochondrial mutations associated with hearing impairment was performed. Clinical examination of several relatives showed a normal general state of health, but in 14 of the members tested variable degrees of sensorineural hearing loss were noted. The pedigree was established and demonstrated a clear pattern of maternal inheritance, with 34 of 38 offspring of deaf mothers being hearing impaired, but none of 22 offspring of deaf fathers having any hearing impairment. Since by far the most likely explanation of such a maternal inheritance pattern is a mitochondrial mutation, molecular testing for the three known mitochondrial mutations, A1555G, A7445G, and Cins7472, was performed on 27 of the relatives. All of the individuals tested had the normal sequence at the sites tested. This family with nonsyndromic sensorineural hearing loss has an inheritance pattern strongly suggestive of a mitochondrial mutation. However, molecular testing for the three known mitochondrial mutations associated with nonsyndromic hearing impairment was negative, implying that additional molecular defects can lead to the same phenotype. The search for this novel molecular defect is underway.

Audiometry↗

PubMed1999

[Brief history of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies].

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies have a long and still unfinished history replete with spectacular discoveries and equally spectacular failures. The story begins in the 18th century with the first descriptions of scrapie, a naturally contagious disease of sheep that was not experimentally proven to be a transmissible infection until 1936. This discovery permitted veterinarian investigators to begin to explore aspects of pathogenesis and the nature of the infectious agent. The additional discovery, in the 1960's, that scrapie was similar to the human diseases kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob vastly widened what had been a comparatively restricted field of research, and led to rapid advances in molecular characterization of the disease agents, culminating in the proposal that they are self-replicating abnormally configured host proteins, or "prions". Despite these advances, we have seen in recent years 3 potentially preventable outbreaks of disease: iatrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease due to contaminated pituitary hormone extracts and dura mater grafts, and a new variant of the disease (Will-Ironside syndrome) linked to consumption of beef contaminated by the agent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, underscoring the disparity between fundamental knowledge and its practical application.

Disease Outbreaks↗

PubMed1999

Prosodic preservation in Landau-Kleffner syndrome: a case report.

Landau-Kleffner syndrome (LKS) is a rare acquired condition of auditory verbal agnosia and convulsive disorder in children. It has been proposed that there is a functional relationship between electrical disturbance and the speech defect. Prosody or the melody of language, as described by Monrad-Krohn (1947), is one aspect of non-verbal communication which is distributed bilaterally in the brain. Prosodic parameters of expression and perception in one 7.5-year-old child were tested to see if they were preserved as a means of communication. The child was observed during video-electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring over a 48-hour period. All utterances were recorded and subject to analysis for the salience and variation of acoustic correlates of prosody. Prosodic comprehension was measured using specific perceptual tasks previously presented to normal children between the ages of 5.5 and 8.5. Despite being unable to meaningfully use or perceive phonemes, the child was able to use variations in fundamental frequency, duration and intensity of utterances, to convey both emotional and propositional intent. Similarly, the child was able to discriminate prosodic contours of a male adult voice to an age equivalent to 5.5 to 6.5 years. This argues in favour of the notion for educating such children not only through the visual channel but also through the auditory channel.

Agnosia↗

PubMed1999

Too much versus too little: the implications of current iodine intake in the United States.

Iodine intake influences the health of Americans today, but in different ways than it has in the past. In the early 1900s, iodine deficiency was responsible for widespread endemic goiter in the United States. The incidence of goiter was markedly reduced by the introduction of iodine supplementation of salt and other foods in the 1920s. By the middle of this century iodine-related problems in the Unites States were more likely to be associated with too much rather than too little of this essential nutrient. Recent and disturbing new data suggest that there has been a sharp decline in iodine intake during the last 20 years, especially in women of reproductive age. A brief comparison of thyroid response to insufficient and excessive intakes in normal and diseased thyroid tissue is presented. The population affected and the implications for therapy are also reviewed.

Diet Surveys↗

PubMed1999

BSE transmission studies with particular reference to blood.

Tissue infectivity in BSE has been comprehensively investigated in cattle with natural BSE and during the incubation period in an experimental pathogenesis study in which cattle were challenged orally with infected cattle brain from natural cases. In natural cases of BSE in cattle, infectivity has been found only in the CNS, (the brain, the spinal cord and retina). No infectivity has been found in about 50 other tissues including bone marrow, clotted blood, buffy coat, serum or foetal calf serum. In the pathogenesis study in which clinical disease was first detected at 35 months post-infection (39 months of age), infectivity has not been found in blood or any assayed component of blood. Experimental parenteral challenge of cattle and mice in three separate experiments with (i) a pool of five brains, (ii) a pool of five spleens and (iii) a pool of lymph nodes from five cattle is incomplete. However, whereas the brain has transmitted disease to both species (in cattle even when diluted about one million times) neither the spleen pool nor the lymph node pool has transmitted disease to either, although the cattle study is incomplete. These experiments have also shown that cattle can detect about 1000 times less infectivity/g than can mice. No infectivity has ever been detected in the blood or any component of blood in natural scrapie of sheep and goats, natural BSE of cattle or experimental BSE of cattle.

Animals↗

PubMed1998

Prevention of transmission of sheep pulmonary adenomatosis by embryo transfer.

Two-hundred-and-fifteen embryos recovered from 76 donor ewes from flocks endemically infected with sheep pulmonary adenomatosis (SPA) and mated with uninfected rams were transferred to 131 uninfected recipients under strict sanitary conditions using International Embryo Transfer Society protocols. The recipients and their progeny were kept in a closed, isolated SPA-free flock. Thirty-eight of 51 progeny from SPA-positive donors and 55 of 74 progeny from donors in which no lesions of SPA were detected survived for at least five years after birth. In a similar study 11 embryos from four uninfected donors mated to an SPA-infected ram were transferred to seven recipients, and four of five progeny born to four recipients survived for at least five years. No evidence of SPA was found in the recipients or their progeny by embryo transfer in either study. On the basis of clinical and pathological criteria, it is concluded that embryo transfer can be used to provide an effective barrier against the transmission of SPA from donors from infected flocks, whether or not the parents show clinical signs of the disease.

Animal Husbandry↗

PubMed1998

An overview of the BSE epidemic in the UK.

The BSE epidemic in the UK is declining rapidly in response to control measures and is en route for eradication by the year 2001. BSE infectivity is restricted in clinically affected natural cases of BSE to central nervous tissues. BSE agent has been isolated from the intestine of experimentally orally-infected cattle from six to 18 months post-challenge. A small maternal risk factor for BSE has been identified but this will not stop the eradication of BSE. To protect the integrity of biological products from the risks associated with the unknown hazard of BSE for man it is recommended that only safe sources of animals and tissues are used. Inactivation procedures employed during processing will provide further guarantees.

Animals↗

PubMed1997

Representing primary electrophoretic data in the 1/time domain: comparison to representations in the time domain.

A plot of absorbance vs 1/time (the "1/time domain") is a more useful representation of the primary data in capillary electrophoresis than traditional plots of absorbance vs time (the "time domain") in a wide set of circumstances, especially when comparing electropherograms in which the rate of electroosmotic flow is not precisely the same. The quantity that is of fundamental interest in capillary electrophoresis (CE) is the electrophoretic mobility of an analyte. The electrophoretic mobility of a species is nonlinearly proportional to time and, therefore, not linearly represented in the time domain: that is, the distance between two peaks along the time axis is not linearly related to the difference in their electrophoretic mobilities. In contrast, the electrophoretic mobility is linearly proportional to 1/time, and the distance between two peaks along the 1/time axis is linearly related to the difference in electrophoretic mobilities. Plots in the 1/time domain are similar to the familiar plots in the time domain (each analyte is represented by a peak, and the order of peaks corresponds to the order in which these analytes reach the detector), but the spacing between the peaks corresponds linearly to differences in mobility. This article derives this useful, visually appealing, and broadly applicable plotting strategy and illustrates common situations in which these plots are more useful than plots in the time domain.

Absorption↗

PubMed1997

BSE: a decade on--Part 2.

Predicted numbers vary widely but the most authoritative estimate is that about 6950 cases of BSE will occur in cattle in the UK during 1997-2001 if new infections via feed have ceased as expected and if 10% maternal transmission occurs in the last half-year of the maternal incubation period. This assumes no culling or premature slaughter. Agreed cull strategies would reduce these numbers considerably and accelerate the observed rate of decline of the disease, but there is no scientific necessity for any cull. Bovine products that were banned as specified bovine offals in 1989/90 and as specified bovine materials by successive legislation are now excluded from the food and feed chains. As this second of the two-part article on BSE shows, there has been slippage in some of our control measures, but public and animal health are adequately protected if the legislation that has been evolved is enforced along present lines. Meanwhile, for human beings, bovine milk is safe to drink and beef is safe to eat.

Animal Feed↗

PubMed1997

BSE: a decade on--Part I.

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), popularly known as "mad cow disease", was discovered in 1986 and has accounted for the deaths of over 165,000 cattle in the UK (by the end of January, 1997) with about 34,000 (mainly dairy) herds involved. The syndrome in the cow includes changes in posture and temperament, apprehension, and loss of coordination. There are many parallels with scraple in sheep, with similar neuropathological changes in the hindbrain that give it a spongiform appearance under the microscope. The facts have been broadly reviewed in The Lancet in 1990 and 1993, and in much more detail elsewhere. In a two-part article, the first of which appears here, we now summarise recent developments.

Animal Feed↗