The widely used means of investigating animal mineral profiles are blood serum or plasma and internal organ tissues. The acquisition of these types of samples can be invasive and requires much effort. These factors become key obstacles in the case of rare and elusive species such as the Western Derby eland (Taurotragus derbianus derbianus, WDE), which is a critically endangered antelope with a current distribution limited to the Niokolo Koba National Park, and two wildlife reserves in Senegal. One of the solutions to this problem is to collect easily accessible samples, such as faeces or fur, which may provide valid information about animal mineral status. Our study focuses on determining the macroelement and microelement levels in animal blood serum, hair, and faeces, and analysing their correlations to evaluate whether hair and/or faeces can be used as a proxy for blood mineral levels. Samples were collected from 11 individual WDEs (6 males, 5 females) during translocations within two reserves. Correlations of mineral concentrations in the blood, hair, and faeces were not found except for Fe in the faeces, which was positively correlated with Fe in the hair (r = 0.64, P < 0.05) and blood (r = 0.69, P < 0.05). The lack of correlations among the different types of samples may be because of the low number of samples; hence, we recommend conducting further research with a broader dataset. Our findings, however, currently indicate that faeces and fur analyses cannot stand alone for the assessment of the mineral status and the determination of WDEs' potential mineral deficiencies.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12011-019-01839-8 | DOI Listing |
J Vet Diagn Invest
December 2024
Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
Evaluating stress in shelter and institutionally owned cats is important to help guide improvements in their welfare. Welfare assessments often focus on behavior metrics and physiologic measurements, such as systemic cortisol levels. The gold standard for measuring acute stress is serum cortisol; measuring cortisol in feces and urine gives reliable time-integrated assessments of acute stress.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFood Funct
January 2025
Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA.
Objective biomarkers of food intake are a sought-after goal in nutrition research. Most biomarker development to date has focused on metabolites detected in blood, urine, skin, or hair, but detection of consumed foods in stool has also been shown to be possible DNA sequencing. An additional food macromolecule in stool that harbors sequence information is protein.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Toxicol Environ Health B Crit Rev
February 2025
Risk Sciences International, Ottawa, Canada.
Blood and urine are historically the most frequent matrices used for measuring chemical levels in human biomonitoring studies. As biomonitoring programs are refreshed, consideration of specific priority substances and specific population targets provide opportunities for inclusion of alternative non- or minimally invasive matrices. This review describes methods used in health risk assessment to characterize exposure and risk based upon biomarkers from noninvasive matrices other than urine or blood, including human milk, hair, fingernails, toenails, exhaled breath, deciduous teeth, sweat, semen, meconium, and feces.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEcol Evol
October 2024
Université de Lyon, VetAgro Sup - Campus Vétérinaire de Lyon, Laboratoire de Parasitologie Vétérinaire Marcy-L'Etoile France.
Low levels of essential mineral elements such as cobalt, copper, and iron, in organisms reduce immune function, increasing the chances of parasitic infection. This phenomenon has been demonstrated widely in domestic animals but rarely in wildlife. In this study, we used data from 7- to 9-month-old roe deer (), living in two different populations facing contrasting environmental conditions (Trois-Fontaines and Chizé), to investigate whether the parasitic and immunological statuses could be related to essential element status.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRiv Psichiatr
October 2024
Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (IBBC-CNR), Department of Sensory Organs, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
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