Retroviral association with ovarian adenocarcinoma in laying hens.

The laying hen has been used as a model for ovarian adenocarcinoma (OAC) in women. Previous work has shown an association between expression of endogenous retroviral proteins and elevated envelope mRNA and occurrence of OAC in humans, but causality has not been demonstrated. The objective of this study was to determine whether there is a similar association between retrovirus presence and OAC in a commercial laying hen flock at the University of Illinois Poultry Research facility with a history of a high OAC prevalence in older hens.

Development of a novel diagnostic test for detection of bovine viral diarrhea persistently infected animals using hair.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether manually plucked hairs might serve as an alternative sample for a quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) testing. Twenty three, 1~3 week old, non-bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) vaccinated calves, found to be positive for BVDV by immunohistochemical staining, were selected and hairs were manually plucked from the ear. qRT-PCR was performed on samples consisting of more than 30 hairs (30~100) and whole blood.

Comparison of growth phase on Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium invasion in an epithelial cell line (IPEC J2) and mucosal explants from porcine small intestine.

Salmonella Typhimurium DT104 is a zoonotic enteropathogen of increasing concern for human health. In this study, the influence of growth phase on invasiveness of a S. Typhimurium DT104 field isolate and two reference strains (SL1344 and ATCC 14028) was compared in IPEC J2 cells and mucosal explants from porcine ileum.