Many domesticated dogs show signs of anxiety, negatively impacting their own and their owner's mental and physical health. A systematic review evaluating whether pressure wraps decrease clinical signs of anxiety in dogs was completed to identify relevant studies. The main outcomes of interest included behavioral and physiological measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is a critical unmet need for safe and efficacious neoadjuvant treatment for cisplatin-ineligible patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Here we launched a phase 1b study using the combination of intravesical cretostimogene grenadenorepvec (oncolytic serotype 5 adenovirus encoding granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor) with systemic nivolumab in cisplatin-ineligible patients with cT2-4aN0-1M0 muscle-invasive bladder cancer. The primary objective was to measure safety, and the secondary objective was to assess the anti-tumor efficacy as measured by pathologic complete response along with 1-year recurrence-free survival.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDecision-making is a cognitive process involving working memory, executive function, and attention. However, the connectivity of large-scale brain networks during decision-making is not well understood. This is because gaining access to large-scale brain networks in humans is still a novel process.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEquine herpesvirus-1 (EHV-1) is a highly prevalent and frequently pathogenic infection of equids. The most serious clinical consequences of infection are abortion and equine herpesvirus myeloencephalopathy (EHM). The previous consensus statement was published in 2009 and considered pathogenesis, strain variation, epidemiology, diagnostic testing, vaccination, outbreak prevention and control, and treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Equine herpes virus type 1 (EHV-1) infection in horses is associated with upper respiratory disease, neurological disease, abortions, and neonatal death.
Review Question: Does pharmacological therapy decrease either the incidence or severity of disease or infection caused by EHV-1 in domesticated horses?
Methods: A systematic review was preformed searching AGRICOLA, CAB Abstracts, Cochrane, PubMed, Web of Science, and WHO Global Health Index Medicus Regional Databases to identify articles published before February 15, 2021. Selection criteria were original research reports published in peer reviewed journals, and studies investigating in vivo use of therapeutic agents for prevention or treatment of EHV-1 in horses.
Background: Rasagiline or pramipexole monotherapy has been suggested for the management of early Parkinson's disease (PD). The aim of this research was to systematically review the clinical efficacy and safety of rasagiline or pramipexole in early PD (defined as disease duration ≤5 years and Hoehn and Yahr stage of ≤3).
Methods: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of rasagiline or pramipexole for early PD published up to September 2021 were retrieved.
Background: Equine herpes virus type 1 (EHV-1) infection in horses is associated with upper respiratory disease, neurological disease, abortions, and neonatal death.
Objective: To determine if there is an association between the level and duration of EHV-1 viremia and either abortion or equine herpesvirus myeloencephalopathy (EHM) in domesticated horses?
Methods: A systematic review was performed searching numerous databases to identify peer reviewed reports that evaluated viremia and EHM, or viremia and abortion published before January 19, 2021. Randomized controlled trials and observational studies were assessed for risk of bias or publication quality.
Background: Equine herpesvirus type 1 (EHV-1) infection is associated with upper respiratory disease, EHM, abortions, and neonatal death.
Research Questions: Are nasal secretions a more sensitive biological sample compared to blood for the detection of EHV-1 infection? How long is EHV-1 detectable after primary infection by PCR?
Methods: MedLine and Web of Science searches identified original peer-reviewed reports evaluating nasal shedding and viremia using virus isolation methods or PCR published in English before October 9, 2023.
Results: Sixty experimental and 20 observational studies met inclusion criteria.
Calcium directly controls or indirectly regulates numerous functions that are critical for neuronal network activity. Intracellular calcium concentration is tightly regulated by numerous molecular mechanisms because spatial domains and temporal dynamics (not just peak amplitude) are critical for calcium control of synaptic plasticity and ion channel activation, which in turn determine neuron spiking activity. The computational models investigating calcium control are valuable because experiments achieving high spatial and temporal resolution simultaneously are technically unfeasible.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPolycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), one of the most common endocrine disorders in women, may involve both environmental and genetic factors. One potential environmental factor of concern is exposure to phthalates and other endocrine disrupting chemicals many of which have adverse effects on the female reproductive system. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate possible association between prenatal phthalate exposure and PCOS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis literature review focuses on the evidence implicating oxidative stress in the pathogenesis of manganese neurotoxicity. This review is not intended to be a systematic review of the relevant toxicologic literature. Instead, in keeping with the spirit of this special journal issue, this review highlights contributions made by Professor Michael Aschner's laboratory in this field of study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study assessed the depth, breadth, and perception of toxicology education in curricula at Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC) member veterinary schools. An online questionnaire was sent twice to all 54 AAVMC members and sent once to a veterinary toxicology list serve. The survey covered areas related to instructor demographics, the depth and extent of toxicology taught, and the respondent's perceptions of their student's ability to perform entrustable professional activities (EPA).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSynaptic plasticity, the experience-induced change in connections between neurons, underlies learning and memory in the brain. Most of our understanding of synaptic plasticity derives from in vitro experiments with precisely repeated stimulus patterns; however, neurons exhibit significant variability in vivo during repeated experiences. Further, the spatial pattern of synaptic inputs to the dendritic tree influences synaptic plasticity, yet is not considered in most synaptic plasticity rules.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc
July 2022
Executive function (EF) consists of higher level cognitive processes including working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibition which together enable goal-directed behaviors. Many neurological disorders are associated with EF dysfunctions which can lead to suboptimal behavior. To assess the roles of these processes, we introduce a novel behavioral task and modeling approach.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe cystic fibrosis (CF) community seeks to explain heterogeneous outcomes of pulmonary exacerbation (PEX) treatment. Serum and sputum inflammatory mediators may identify people with CF (PwCF) at risk for suboptimal responses. However, lack of an established association between response phenotypes and these mediators limits clinical application.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic prompted instruction at many veterinary schools to switch to an emergency remote teaching format to prevent viral transmission associated with in-person synchronous lectures. This study surveyed student perspectives and academic performance in a pre-planned online second-year veterinary toxicology course given at North Carolina State University in Spring 2020. This course relied on asynchronous narrated presentations for content delivery.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA critical aspect of canine scent detection involves the animal's ability to respond to odors based on prior odor training. In the current study, dogs ( = 12) were initially trained on an olfactory simple discrimination task using vanillin as the target odorant. Based on their performance on this task, dogs were assigned to experimental groups.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCorticostriatal synaptic integration is partitioned among striosome (patch) and matrix compartments of the dorsal striatum, allowing compartmentalized control of discrete aspects of behavior. Despite the significance of such organization, it's unclear how compartment-specific striatal output is dynamically achieved, particularly considering new evidence that overlap of afferents is substantial. We show that dopamine oppositely shapes responses to convergent excitatory inputs in mouse striosome and matrix striatal spiny projection neurons (SPNs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFToxicol Pathol
December 2019
Nasal pathology can play an important role in the risk assessment process. For example, olfactory neuron loss (ONL) is one of the most sensitive end points seen in subchronic rodent hydrogen sulfide (HS) studies and has been used by several agencies to derive health-protective toxicity values. Alternative methods that rely on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models to account for the influence of airflow on HS-induced ONL have been proposed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrevious work from our group indicated an association between the gastrointestinal microbiota of infants with cystic fibrosis (CF) and airway disease in this population. Here we report that stool microbiota of infants with CF demonstrates an altered but largely unchanging within-individual bacterial diversity (alpha diversity) over the first year of life, in contrast to the infants without CF (control cohort), which showed the expected increase in alpha diversity over the first year. The beta diversity, or between-sample diversity, of these two cohorts was significantly different over the first year of life and was statistically significantly associated with airway exacerbations, confirming our earlier findings.
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