Business-centric data solutions for safeguarding animal agriculture in the United States of America.

Business-centric solutions to data-related problems often yield the greatest positive impacts and improvements for private enterprises but are challenging to design and implement at scale within government agencies. The core mission of the Veterinary Services of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal Plant Health Inspection Service is to safeguard animal agriculture in the United States of America, and effective data management underpins these efforts. As this agency works to assist data-driven decision-making in animal health management, it continues to use a blend of best practices from Federal Data Strategy initiatives and the International Data Management Association framework.

Feral Swine Commercial Slaughter and Condemnation at Federally Inspected Slaughter Establishments in the United States 2017-2019.

Feral swine populations in the United States (US) are capable of carrying diseases that threaten the health of the domestic swine industry. Performing routine, near-real time monitoring for an unusual rise in feral swine slaughter condemnation will increase situational awareness and early detection of potential animal health issues, trends, and emerging diseases. In preparation to add feral swine to APHIS weekly monitoring, a descriptive analysis of feral swine slaughter and condemnations was conducted to understand the extent of commercial feral swine slaughter in the US at federally inspected slaughter establishments and to determine which condemnation reasons should be included.

Development of Reporting Guidelines for Animal Health Surveillance-AHSURED.

With the current trend in animal health surveillance toward risk-based designs and a gradual transition to output-based standards, greater flexibility in surveillance design is both required and allowed. However, the increase in flexibility requires more transparency regarding surveillance, its activities, design and implementation. Such transparency allows stakeholders, trade partners, decision-makers and risk assessors to accurately interpret the validity of the surveillance outcomes.

Equine syndromic surveillance in Colorado using veterinary laboratory testing order data.

Introduction: The Risk Identification Unit (RIU) of the US Dept. of Agriculture's Center for Epidemiology and Animal Health (CEAH) conducts weekly surveillance of national livestock health data and routine coordination with agricultural stakeholders. As part of an initiative to increase the number of species, health issues, and data sources monitored, CEAH epidemiologists are building a surveillance system based on weekly syndromic counts of laboratory test orders in consultation with Colorado State University laboratorians and statistical analysts from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Word search performance for diagnoses of equine surgical colics in free-text electronic patient records.

The objectives of the current project were to: (1) identify limitations of search sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV) for free-text surgical diagnoses included in electronic patient records maintained at the University of California, Davis, Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital (VMTH), (2) develop procedural or programmable recommendations for removing these limitations, and (3) provide guidelines for effective search strategies for users performing aggregate searches using the VMTH clinical information system. Search sensitivity corresponds to detection sensitivity (the capacity of a search term to 'identify' a relevant document) and search PPV indicates the proportion of retrieved documents that are relevant. All horses submitted to the VMTH for a gastrointestinal (GI) disorder requiring surgical intervention in 1995 were identified using procedure codes for billing purposes and stored in the electronic patient record.

Association between long periods without high-speed workouts and risk of complete humeral or pelvic fracture in thoroughbred racehorses: 54 cases (1991-1994).

Objective: To determine whether a two-month or longer period without official high-speed workouts (lay-up) is associated with humeral or pelvic fracture in Thoroughbred racehorses.

Design: Reprospective study.

Animals: Thoroughbred racehorses in California that were euthanatized because of a complete humeral or pelvic fracture.

A case-crossover study of intensive racing and training schedules and risk of catastrophic musculoskeletal injury and lay-up in California thoroughbred racehorses.

The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between intensive racing and training schedules and risk of either catastrophic musculoskeletal injury (CMI) or lay-up from racing in California Thoroughbreds. Thoroughbred racehorses that sustained a CMI during racing or training and either were subsequently euthanized or died on a California racetrack during 1991 and 1992 were studied using a case-crossover study design. Each study subject (case) provided its own self-matched control information in the form of 'typical' exposure frequency, determined or estimated from historic information.

Relationship between race start characteristics and risk of catastrophic injury in thoroughbreds: 78 cases (1992).

Objective: To investigate relationships of several racehorse characteristics and race conditions with risk of a catastrophic musculoskeletal injury (CMI) resulting in euthanasia in Thoroughbreds during racing in California in 1992.

Design: Retrospective longitudinal study.

Animals: Thoroughbreds that incurred CMI during racing and all California race entrants in 1992.

High-speed exercise history and catastrophic racing fracture in thoroughbreds.

Objective: To investigate the relation between several racing speed history characteristics and risk of fatal skeletal injury (FSI) in racing Thoroughbreds.

Animals: 64 Thoroughbreds euthanatized during a 9-month period in 1991 at a California racemeet because of a catastrophic fracture incurred while racing (cases), identified retrospectively. For each race in which an FSI occurred, 1 control horse was randomly selected from the noncatastrophically injured participants.

Fatal musculoskeletal injuries incurred during racing and training in thoroughbreds.

Objective: To characterize and contrast data from Thoroughbreds that incurred a fatal musculoskeletal injury (FMI; injury resulting in death or euthanasia) during racing or training and data from all California race entrants during a 9-month period in 1991.

Design: Case-control study.

Animals: Thoroughbreds that incurred a FMI during racing or training at a California race-meet and all California race entrants from January through June and October through December 1991.

An asparaginase of Aspergillus nidulans is subject to oxygen repression in addition to nitrogen metabolite repression.

Of five amidohydrolase activities subject to nitrogen metabolite repression in Aspergillus nidulans, L-asparaginase shows clearest evidence of also being subject to repression by atmospheric oxygen. Such oxygen repressibility is only evident under nitrogen metabolite derepressed conditions. Asparaginase levels are also considerably elevated by areA300, an altered function allele of the positive acting wide domain regulatory gene areA mediating nitrogen metabolite repression and are drastically reduced by loss of function mutations in areA.