All Articles: Research

The current standard of surveillance of foreign animal disease in the U.S. relies on cooperative producers and practitioners to gather and send suspect samples to approved labs based on their best judgements.

The best way to mitigate foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks is to find it quickly—to reduce the time between suspicion of an outbreak and confirmation. But current testing methods require samples be sent to diagnostic laboratories—a costly and time-consuming process.

The role of genetics and heritability in Border Collie collapse had been unknown. Now, University of Minnesota researchers have recently published findings from a study seeking to clarify the role of genetics in this complex disease by investigating its underlying genetic architecture.

It is well understood that Echinococcus spp., a type of zoonotic parasitic tapeworm, spills over into humans through contaminated soil or water—and through their pets. But unlike humans, dogs are asymptomatic when infected with echinococcus, which makes it difficult to detect before a human is infected.

Samples of hair, blood, and heart tissue are en route to the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Equine Genetics and Genomics Laboratory, where scientists studying cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death in racehorses will apply their expertise to the overall picture of the 3-year-old colt’s death.

Proactive assessments provide a scientific blueprint—complete with a calculated risk rating—to inform animal movement decisions for a variety of food-supply pathways during such outbreaks.

The challenge arises from the unpredictability of swine influenza infections becoming zoonotic and, in some instances, turning into a human pandemic like the 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak.

Recent studies have shown something called epiphyseal cartilage necrosis—lesions caused by lack of blood flow to joints—is the radiographically invisible precursor to juvenile osteochondritis dissecans.

The Centers for Disease Control calls antibiotic (or antimicrobial) resistance “one of the biggest public health challenges of our time,” responsible for 2.5 million infections and more than 35,000 human deaths in the U.S. each year.

Although studies in Europe and Asia have explored the role of rodent pests in zoonotic disease outbreaks, comparatively little research has investigated the rodent-agricultural interface in the United States.