Spavin in modern and archaeological cattle: Reassessing its association with traction use.

Objective: To investigate the correlations of biological factors, including age, body size, and sex, with the occurrence of spavin, demonstrating that using spavin to indicate cattle use for draught work from archaeological sites is questionable.

Materials: Metatarsals from 126 modern non-draught cattle kept under similar conditions, along with published data of 18 draught oxen.

Results: This study demonstrates that spavin strongly correlates with age, body weight, and to some extent, restricted movement, with no observed correlation with sex in non-draught cattle.

Anti-CD40L therapy prevents the formation of precursor lesions to gastric B-cell MALT lymphoma in a mouse model.

Mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma is a B-cell tumour that develops over many decades in the stomachs of individuals with chronic Helicobacter pylori infection. We developed a new mouse model of human gastric MALT lymphoma in which mice with a myeloid-specific deletion of the innate immune molecule, Nlrc5, develop precursor B-cell lesions to MALT lymphoma at only 3 months post-Helicobacter infection versus 9-24 months in existing models. The gastric B-cell lesions in the Nlrc5 knockout mice had the histopathological features of the human disease, notably lymphoepithelial-like lesions, centrocyte-like cells, and were infiltrated by dendritic cells (DCs), macrophages, and T-cells (CD4 , CD8 and Foxp3 ).