Pediatric Liver Transplantation: Then and Now.

This paper reviews the past 50 years of liver transplantation in children from the perspective of patient demographics, perioperative patient management, surgical techniques, immunosuppression and patient outcomes.

Routes of transmission and consequences of small ruminant lentiviruses (SRLVs) infection and eradication schemes.

Small ruminant lentiviruses (SRLV = maedi-visna in sheep and caprine arthritis encephalitis in goats) are distributed throughout most countries of the world, particularly Europe. Laboratories from 16 European countries established collaborations within the framework of a COST (CO-operation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research) action sponsored by the European Union in order to (i) better organize their research programmes on SRLVs and (ii) to coordinate efforts to combat these two diseases. After five years, a consensus conference--the first one in the veterinary medicine field--concluded the work of this network of laboratories by reviewing the present position and discussing three important questions in the field of SRLVs: routes of transmission, consequences of infection and potential role of eradication programmes at either a European or local level, according to the situation in each country or region.

Detection of false-positive sera in contagious agalactia with a multiantigen ELISA and their elimination with a protein G conjugate.

In serology, lack of specificity can generally be attributed to cross-reactions between different pathogens with antigens bearing similar epitopes. During seroepidemiologic surveys of contagious agalactia of sheep caused by Mycoplasma agalactiae infection, numerous sera were analyzed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). A few sera reacted with various antigens coated on plates, including the well with no antigen.

Maedi-visna virus infection in sheep: a review.

The maedi-visna virus (MVV) is classified as a lentivirus of the retroviridae family. The genome of MVV includes three genes: gag, which encodes for group-specific antigens; pol, which encodes for reverse transcriptase, integrase, RNAse H, protease and dUTPase and env, the gene encoding for the surface glycoprotein responsible for receptor binding and entry of the virus into its host cell. In addition, analogous to other lentiviruses, the genome contains genes for regulatory proteins, i.

Priming with tat-deleted caprine arthritis encephalitis virus (CAEV) proviral DNA or live virus protects goats from challenge with pathogenic CAEV.

We previously reported that infection of goats with caprine arthritis encephalitis virus (CAEV) tat- proviral DNA or virus results in persistent infection, since the animals seroconverted and direct virus isolation from cultures of blood-derived macrophages was positive. In this study we wanted to determine whether goats injected with CAEV tat- proviral DNA or virus were protected against challenge with the pathogenic homologous virus and to investigate whether CAEV tat- was still pathogenic. All animals injected with CAEV tat- became infected as indicated by seroconversion and virus isolation.