The threat posed by emerging infectious diseases is a major concern for global public health, animal health and food security, and the role of birds in transmission is increasingly under scrutiny. Each year, millions of mass-reared game-farm birds are released into the wild, presenting a unique and a poorly understood risk to wild and susceptible bird populations, and to human health. In particular, the shedding of enteric pathogens through excrement into bodies of water at shared migratory stop-over sites, and breeding and wintering grounds, could facilitate multi-species long-distance pathogen dispersal and infection of high numbers of naive endemic birds annually.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInfluenza A viruses (IAV) circulate endemically among many wild aquatic bird populations that seasonally migrate between wintering grounds in southern latitudes to breeding ranges along the perimeter of the circumpolar arctic. Arctic and subarctic zones are hypothesized to serve as ecologic drivers of the intercontinental movement and reassortment of IAVs due to high densities of disparate populations of long distance migratory and native bird species present during breeding seasons. Iceland is a staging ground that connects the East Atlantic and North Atlantic American flyways, providing a unique study system for characterizing viral flow between eastern and western hemispheres.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLucitanib is a multi-tyrosine kinase inhibitor whose targets are associated with angiogenesis and other key cancer and immune pathways. Its antiangiogenic properties are understood, but lucitanib's immunomodulatory activity is heretofore unknown. Lucitanib exhibited such activity in vivo, increasing CD3 + , CD8 + , and CD4 + T cells and decreasing dendritic cells and monocyte-derived suppressor cells in mouse spleens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSince 2014, widespread, annual mortality events involving multiple species of seabirds have occurred in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, and Chukchi Sea. Among these die-offs, emaciation was a common finding with starvation often identified as the cause of death. However, saxitoxin (STX) was detected in many carcasses, indicating exposure of these seabirds to STX in the marine environment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF