Investigation of side effects to treatment and cause of death in 63 Scandinavian dogs suffering from meningoencephalitis of unknown origin: a retrospective study.

Background: Meningoencephalitis of unknown origin is a common cause of severe neurological disease in dogs. The term covers a heterogeneous group of noninfectious inflammatory diseases, with immune dysregulation widely accepted as the underlying disease mechanism. Current treatment consists of immunosuppression, with corticosteroids being the mainstay of virtually all treatment regimens.

MicroRNA profiling of cerebrospinal fluid from dogs with steroid responsive meningitis-arteritis and meningoencephalitis of unknown origin.

Introduction: Non-infectious inflammatory diseases of the central nervous system in dogs, such as steroid responsive meningitis-arteritis (SRMA) and meningoencephalitis of unknown origin (MUO), represent a common clinical challenge that needs extensive and multimodal work-up to reach a presumptive diagnosis. Both diseases are presumably caused by dysregulations of the immune system, but further research is needed in order to understand the molecular mechanisms behind each disease and to optimize treatment.

Methods: By next-generation sequencing and subsequent quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) verification, we designed a prospective case-control pilot study to analyze the small RNA profiles of cerebrospinal fluid from dogs suffering from MUO ( = 5), dogs suffering from SRMA ( = 8), and healthy dogs ( = 5) presented for elective euthanasia used as the Control group.