Companion animal abuse is an issue that concerns not only veterinarians and law enforcement agencies but also society in general. Animals that die under suspicious or violent circumstances should be submitted to reference laboratories for a postmortem examination by veterinary forensic pathologists trained to recognize animal abuse. Nevertheless, the low notification rate of such cases in Spain may explain the country's lag in the development of veterinary forensics and the limited information available on animal abuse epidemiology in comparison with other countries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe sequence of cheek teeth mineralization, eruption, and replacement of an extinct horse species is here documented with radiological techniques for the first time thanks to the exceptional preservation of Hipparion sp. mandibles from Cerro de los Batallones (Madrid Basin, Spain). The sequence of dental ontogeny in mammals provides valuable insights about life history traits, such as the pace of growth, and about the mode of formation of fossiliferous assemblages.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe prevention and treatment of obesity in children is based on adequate nutrition and exercise plus antihyperglycaemic drugs. Currently, the incidence of childhood obesity is aggravated in ethnicities with thrifty genotype, but there is no available information on the effects of metformin therapy. The relative effects of lifestyle and metformin on patterns of growth, fattening, metabolic status and attainment of puberty were assessed in females of an obese swine model (Iberian gilts), allocated to three experimental groups (group A, obesogenic diet and scarce exercise; group DE, adequate diet and opportunity for exercise; and group DEM, adequate diet and opportunity for exercise plus metformin).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe main role of early nutritional programming in the current rise of obesity and associated diseases is well known. However, translational studies are mostly based in postnatal food excess and, thus, there is a paucity of information on the phenotype of individuals with prenatal deficiencies but adequate postnatal conditions. Thus, we assessed the effects of prenatal programming (comparing descendants from females fed with a diet fulfilling 100 or only 50% of their nutritional requirements for pregnancy) on gene expression, patterns of growth and fattening, metabolic status and puberty attainment of a swine model of obesity/leptin resistance with controlled postnatal nutrition and opportunity of exercise.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurposes: To determine the feasibility of MRI for imaging subcutaneous and visceral adiposity in longitudinal studies in obese swine models (Iberian pig). To establish the anatomical regions of interest (ROIs) and measurement points (MPs) adequate for their evaluation through analyses on the inter-individual variability and over-time reproducibility and through the assessment of their reliability and validity by comparison with in vivo and ex vivo zoometric data.
Material And Methods: Five male and five female pigs were used from four (live weight around 48 kg and back-fat depth around 18 mm) to eight months old (live weight 134 kg and back-fat depth around 48 mm).