Vets and physicians find research parallels
Dr. Jonathan M. Levine at Texas A&M studies spinal cord injuries in pets like Dexter, a dachschund.
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: September 10, 2012
Three times in the last two months, researchers from St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan headed across town to the Animal Medical Center to look at dogs.
Exchanges of this sort are becoming increasingly common. Once a narrow trail traveled by a few hardy pioneers, the road connecting veterinary colleges and human medical institutions has become a busy thoroughfare over the last five years or so, with a steady flow of researchers representing a wide variety of medical disciplines on both sides.
One reason is a growing frustration with the inefficiency of using the rodent model in lab research, which often fails to translate to human subjects. So researchers are turning their attention to the naturally occurring diseases in dogs, horses, sheep and pigs, whose physiology and anatomy more closely resemble those of humans.
“The drugs cure the mice and keep failing when we try them on humans,” said Dr. John Ohlfest, an immunotherapist at the University of Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center, who began working with the university’s veterinary school in 2005 to study canine brain cancers. “The whole system is broken.”
Dr. Laurence J. N. Cooper, who develops immune-based therapies at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and recently started making canine T cells for lymphoma research at Texas A&M’s veterinary school, said: “There’s got to be a better way. Canine biologies look like ours, and the treatments look like ours.”
The growing realization that vets and medical doctors may have very good reasons to talk to one another has led to a host of collaborative research projects aimed at speeding the journey from lab to human clinical trials and, in the end, producing a result that can be applied to human and animal patients alike.
These projects often emanate from partnerships like the National Cancer Center’s comparative oncology program, created in 2006 to coordinate canine cancer trials among 20 oncology centers across the United States, or the Center for Comparative Medicine and Translational Research at North Carolina State University’s veterinary college, which recently signed a partnership agreement with the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center to do research on regenerating organs in humans and pets.
“In the past I might have gone over to the medical school with a specific problem and ask advice,” said Dr. Larry D. Galuppo, an equine surgeon at the University of California, Davis, who has been experimenting with the latest stem-cell therapies to repair tendon injuries in horses. “But it wasn’t programmatic the way it is now.”
It is not unusual, these days, for veterinary surgeons to call in their human-medicine counterparts for consultations or even to take part in tricky operations. Vets go on rounds at hospitals for people, and vice versa. Both sides attend each other’s conferences. “It’s still grass roots, it’s still early days, but it’s very exciting,” Dr. Ohlfest said.
In part, the proliferation of partnerships reflects a philosophical movement known as “one health,” or “one medicine,” the recognition that about 60 percent of all diseases move across species and that environmental pollution, animal diseases and human diseases constitute a single interlocking problem.
This was the subject of a joint declaration by the American Medical Association and the American Veterinary Medical Association in 2006 aimed at encouraging information sharing and joint projects among the far-flung branches of veterinary and human medicine.
More concretely, the completion of the canine genome map, in 2005, set off an explosion in basic research. Although less celebrated than the Human Genome Project, the canine map gave researchers a blueprint with clear potential for human use, since the gene codes for canines could be matched, one for one, with their human counterparts.
Cooperation can take the form of advanced research into new forms of diagnostic imaging, or gene manipulation. Or it can be as humble as fitting a dog with a shoe.
Dr. Robert Hardie, a surgeon at the University of Wisconsin’s school of veterinary medicine, turned to the orthotics lab at the university’s medical school in 2005 when he could not heal a post-surgery foot wound in Sam, a 200-pound Irish wolfhound.
As many other large dogs with footpad injuries do, Sam kept putting weight on the wound, caused when a toe had to be amputated. The orthotics team took a cast of Sam’s foot and made a foam-lined plastic boot with Velcro straps. Dr. Hardie later worked with the team to develop specialized braces for tendon injuries.
Often, partnerships embrace multiple institutions and, within institutions, fields as diverse as biomechanics and textiles.
Dr. Jonathan M. Levine, a veterinary neurologist at the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, joined forces with the medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, to test a promising new drug that blocks a particular enzyme that inflicts secondary damage, like the aftershock to an earthquake, on injured spinal nerves.
Working with dachshunds and other dwarf canine breeds, which often suffer from spinal cord injuries because of their propensity to develop herniated discs, he recently won a grant from the Department of Defense, which is interested in the application of his research to battlefield injuries.
At the same time, one of Dr. Levine’s colleagues, Dr. Jay Griffin, has collaborated with specialists at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston to develop a new technique, called diffusion tensor imaging, whose sensitivity allows them to see precisely how spinal cord cells die.
The big bet is that veterinary science and human medical science can combine to achieve efficiencies that translate across species. In some instances, this has already happened.
Dr. Hollis G. Potter, head of magnetic resonance imaging at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan, has been working with Dr. Lisa A. Fortier of Cornell University’s college of veterinary medicine to analyze meniscus injuries using sheep.
Quantitative M.R.I. techniques like ultrashort echo-time imaging makes it possible to see how knee tissue heals, and how much stress it can stand after surgical repair, information that has immediate application for the human knee. “In just a couple of years, we’ve taken this process from sheep to humans,” Dr. Potter said.
The reverse route is even quicker. “Traditionally there has been a 10-to-20-year lag between animal and human medicine,” said Dr. Chick Weisse of the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan, who for the last two years has been treating hard-to-reach canine tumors with a frozen-nitrogen technique he learned at Sloan-Kettering.
“That gap has narrowed,” he said. “Now you see renal transplants, hip replacements — things they said would never be done on animals. Things are happening so fast right now that it’s almost simultaneous.”
Another New AHF Pet Partner Team
Janice Gollner and Max! Congratulations!
New AHF Pet Partner Team
Leslie White and Lexi – welcome aboard! Lexi is 5 years old.
Does your pet favor the right or left paw? Tests can tell
Veterinarian Stefanie Schwartz of the Veterinary Neurology Center in Tustin, Calif., developed a method of testing pets to determine whether they are right- or left-paw dominant. It is a series of dexterity tests that can determine which paw is dominant. A previous study suggested that 50% of cats are right-paw dominant, 40% left-pawed, and 10% ambidextrous, while another study showed dogs were equally right- and left-pawed. The Daily Mail (London) (8/28)
Is your pet right or left-handed? The DIY test that uses cheese, sofas and the backdoor to find out… but you have to do it 100 times
Quite possibly not. But if you have, this could be just the thing you’ve been waiting for.
Dr. Stefanie Schwartz of the Veterinary Neurology Center in Tustin, Calififornia, claims to have developed a test to figure out whether a dog or cat is right or left-handed.
Paw preference won’t make a dog or cat walk, talk or wink like a human. You won’t even get a high-five or a fist pump out of it. But vets and owners reckons the curiosity factor will have pet owners clamoring to find out if theirs is a leftie or a rightie.
Results are in: Veterinarian Christina Thompson performs a right-handed-left-handed test with a Chihuahua dog
Researchers are studying things like right brain-left brain connections, genetics and sexual orientation that may one day change the way dogs and cats are bred, raised, trained and used, said Schwartz.
Some horses have to be ambidextrous, said Dr. Sharon Crowell-Davis, a behavior and anatomy professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Georgia.
‘They have to be able to circle right and left. If not, they can trip,’ Crowell-Davis said. ‘You have to work to get them to take the lead they prefer less.’
She has never seen an advertisement promoting right or left-pawed dogs or cats. ‘The only time you see it used in advertising is with horses. If a horse if being offered for sale, because of issues on the lead, it may say ‘Works well on both leads’ to emphasize the horse has had training.’
For dogs and cats their well-being doesn’t depend on preference.
A 1991 study at Ataturk University in Turkey showed 50 per cent of cats were right-pawed, 40 per cent were left-pawed and 10 per cent were ambidextrous. That study might be out-of-date, Schwartz said, but it does provide percentages.
A 2006 study from the University of Manchester in England showed dogs were split half-and-half.
About 90 per cent of humans are right-handed and 10 per cent are left-handed.
Laterality — the textbook term meaning one side of the brain is dominant over the other — may someday help breeders predict which puppies will make the best military, service and therapy dogs, Schwartz said, and that could be lifesaving.
But for now, if you care enought, Schwartz has a series of tests that she says will determine the paw preference of your pet, when performed 100 times.
She suggests filling a toy with something delicious and putting it in the center of the dog’s visual field. Which paw does it use to touch the toy first? Which paw does the dog use to hold the toy?
Or you could put something sticky on a dog or cat’s nose and take note of which paw it uses to remove it? Place a treat or a piece of cheese under a sofa, just beyond a dog or cat’s reach, she says. Which paw does it use to try and get it out?
Other indicators include which paw a dog offers to shake when asked or knock the backdoor with when it wants to be let in. Similarly for cats you can track which paw it uses to bat a dangled toy or to reach a treat lurking under a bowl.
Schwartz said there are a few things that might alter test results, including that if a dog has arthritis or an injury in a shoulder or leg, it could use the other to compensate.
When a cat really wants something, she said, tests show it uses its dominant paw, but when it’s just fooling around it may use either or both.
And it is also possible that handedness in dogs, and maybe cats, will change over time as the animal’s motivation changes.
Robin A.F. Olson, founder and president of rescue organisation Kitten Associates Inc, said her cats are always reaching for toys or treats with one paw or another.
‘I try not to be judgmental of my cats’ abilities or lack thereof. We will never worry about the anti-paw.’
It appears that Nora, an internationally acclaimed 8-year-old piano-playing tabby from Philadelphia, owned by piano teacher Betsy Alexander and her artist-photographer husband, Burnell Yow, is right-pawed.
Yow studied her videos and ‘determined that she appears to lead with her right paw, then follow with her left,’ Alexander said.
But she has her ambidextrous, headstrong moments.
‘She uses both paws to reach for specific notes, even black notes … and she uses her head to roll a series of multiple notes.’
Burning question or a waste of time? How to find out if your pet is a leftie or rightie
If you teach a dog to shake, which paw does it offer you first and most often?
Fill a toy with something delicious and put it in the center of the dog’s visual field. Which paw does it use to touch the toy first? Which paw does the dog use to hold the toy?
Put something sticky on a dog or cat’s nose. Which paw does the animal use to remove it?
Place a treat or a piece of cheese under a sofa, just beyond a dog or cat’s reach. Which paw does it use to try and get it out?
Dangle a toy over a cat’s head. Which paw does it lift to bat it?
Put a treat under a bowl. Which paw does the cat or dog use to move it?
When a dog wants in the backdoor, which paw does it ‘knock’ with?
Veterinarians help baby bobcat burned in forest fire
Crews found a bobcat kitten listless and circling near the stump of a tree in the wake of fires that have burned some 73,000 acres in Northern California. Veterinarians at the Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care shelter are treating her for an eye infection and burns on all four paws. The bobcat, named Chips by her rescuers, is expected to recover and will be returned into the wild. San Francisco Chronicle/SF Gate blog (8/28)
Crews battling and cleaning up after Chips Fire, the wildfire that has blazed through almost 73,000 acres in Plumas and Lassen national forests, have come to be ready for anything — but nobody was prepared for the helpless bundle of fur they stumbled upon this weekend.
Members of the Mad River Hand Crew were patrolling and conducting mop-up operations near the north end of the fire on Saturday when they found a baby bobcat puttering along the side of the road.
Crew superintendent Tad Hair said the tiny female bobcat, which was about the size of a domestic kitten, seemed dazed and had trouble seeing. She was walking in circles near a stump, he said.
Not wanting to disrupt a wild animal from nature, the crew did a quick assessment of the kit and tried to walk away. But she began to follow the sound of their footsteps, and would curl up on Hair’s boots every time they would stop.
They brought her back to the incident command post after finding no grown bobcat tracks in the area. They contacted Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care, a nonprofit that rehabilitates injured and orphaned wildlife and returns them to the wild, and then began to care for her and prepare her for the trip to the shelter, said Laurie Pearson, a public information officer for the Chips Fire.
By then, they had taken to calling her Chips, after the fire.
Public information officer Clare Delaney said Chips was making tiny bobcat yowls as they cared for her, giving her ice chips and special kitten formula, and wiping some of the soot and ash from her fur.
“When I wiped her little face off and Laurie was holding her, she just fell right back to sleep,” she said. “[She reacted like] it was her mom licking her face.”
A firefighter transporting her to the Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care shelter flushed Chips eyes out on the way over, Pearson said. A veterinarian at the shelter found that Chips had an infection in her eyes, and after flushing them out again, and administered some ointment.
Veterinarians found that Chips also suffered second-degree burns on all four of her tiny paws, Pearson said. Until her paws are fully healed, Chips will rest on a soft bed, fattening up on six pulverized mice and more kitten formula.
Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care executive director and co-founder Cheryl Millham said she is confident Chips will regain full vision in both eyes once the infection is cleared. She said Chips is thriving and recovering nicely at the shelter.
Chips will eventually socialize with other bobcats before she is returned to the wild for good, Millham said.
Delaney said the crew became very attached to Chips.
“She was so sooty and dirty when they found her and they were worried because she was just walking in circles and was probably dehydrated,” she said. “But I think she’s got a really good start.”
Boy creates “bucket list” for his dying service dog
Cole Hein, an 11-year-old boy who has a condition that randomly stops his breathing, created a “lick-it list” for his dog, Bingo, who developed canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome. Bingo, a 13-year-old Jack Russell terrier, sounds an alert when Cole stops breathing and needs CPR, and she has saved the boy’s life several times. The list, a canine “bucket list,” includes dog-friendly ideas such as sampling dog treats shared from around the world.
When eleven-year old Cole Hein found out that his Jack Russell Terrier had only weeks to live, he created the “Lick It List,” a canine bucket list to honor his pup Bingo. For five years, Bingo has been taking care of Cole, who has a medical condition that can stop his breathing. The thirteen-year old dog is trained to alert adults if the boy needs CPR.
In the first six months the two were together, Bingo saved Cole’s life three times, leading to her induction into the Purina Animal Hall of Fame in 2010. Now it’s Cole’s turn to help Bingo make the most of her time left as the pup battles Canine Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome.
Here is Cole and Bingo’s Lick It List:
1) Let Bingo “taste” the world by getting him dog treats from around the globe
2) Take Bingo for one last “public” outing to Ruckers (a favorite game-and-pizza place)
3) Walk around the block twice with Bingo
4) Do a photo shoot with just Bingo and Cole (which has already been arranged)
To help Cole achieve Bingo’s Lick It List, he’s asking people around the world to send treats. No monetary donations will be accepted (Bingo’s medical care is taken care of). Any treats that Bingo can’t consume will be donated to the local animal shelter. Likewise, if you’re not able to send treats, Cole asks that you make a donation to your favorite animal rescue in Bingo’s name.
Dog treats can be sent to:
Cole Hein/Bingo Hein P.O. Box 413 Shilo, MB Canada R0K 2A0
If my dogs had a bucket list, treats would certainly be number one! What would be on your dog’s Lick It List?
The wackiest pet names and how they came to be
For the fourth year in a row, Veterinary Pet Insurance scoured their pet database of more than 485,000 animals for the wackiest-named cats and dogs around. Meet the pets who inspired these madcap monikers, and the creative owners who came up with them.
Chew Barka
Once their younger child turned 5 and was off to school, Michele and Peter Manzelli III were feeling a bit lonely. They decided against trying for a third child; instead, despite Peter’s allergies, the Chelmsford, Mass., couple decided a dog might just fill the void. So they brought home an apricot toy poodle (a hypoallergenic breed) for a trial sleepover in 2010.
“All he did was chew at things and bark at everybody,” Michele told TODAY.com.
“We started calling him ‘Hey, Chew,’ ‘Hey Bark,’ because that’s all he was doing,” Peter recalled. “We all looked at each other and said ‘Chew Barka — that’s a perfect name for him.’” The little puppy was therefore named after Chewbacca, the huge, furry Wookiee warrior, and despite sinking his teeth into all of Michele’s flip-flops and gnawing on the area rugs, he was in the Manzelli home to stay.
“Of course everybody fell in love with him,” Michele said, adding that her husband is doing fine with the help of daily allergy medication. “After one night, we couldn’t give him back.”
Though her now 12-year-old son and husband are the “Star Wars” fans, it was Michele who concocted the dog’s name. Her creativity earned Chew Barka the top spot on Veterinary Pet Insurance Co.’s 2012 list of wackiest dog names.
The Manzellis get a great reaction to it. “They love it because he’s so little,” Michele said. “He’s furry all over, but he’s not ferocious-looking. He’s very-timid looking.”
These days, Chewy, as he’s called, doesn’t bite the Manzellis’ belongings as much. But he still makes a lot of noise. “He’s a good protector,” Michele told TODAY.com. “He barks at everybody who walks by.”
And Michele, who works part-time from home, and Peter, who also works at home sometimes, aren’t feeling quite so alone, especially when Chewy snuggles with them at night.
“He’s just like a heat-seeker,” she said. “He loves to cuddle up.”
petinsurance.com
Pico de Gato
The scientific wordplay that led to the names of Vince and Caroline Rye’s two cats leaves many people scratching their heads.
When the San Diego couple brought home their first cat about four years ago, Vince, a physicist, had the idea for the name Mu. It was a combination of the scientific symbol Mu, meaning micro, and the little kitty’s meowing.
“He thought it would be funny, and when we were trying to think of names, he’s like, ‘I’ve got a name that’d be pretty ironic,’” Caroline explained. “He has a sarcastic science sense of humor.”
About a year later, the family brought home another kitten. “Since he was a little baby at the time, we were trying to think of things that were smaller than ‘micro’ or Mu, so we were playing with different words and Pico came up,” Caroline explained. “We were trying to think of something to go with it.”
So they drew on several elements from their lives. The couple often call cats “gatos,” Spanish for cat, and they love Mexican food, with Rye often making homemade pico de gallo.
“We were thinking ‘pico’ is smaller than ‘micro,’ and if we’re going the scientific route, since we always call our cats ‘gatos,’ pico, gato — it just kind of went together,” Caroline said. The name “Pico de Gato” was born, and now it sits atop VPI’s 2012 list of wackiest cat names.
Fittingly for a pet with a food-inspired name, Pico is fond of human food. He begs for cheese and has enjoyed grilled steak burritos, Caroline said. “He goes crazy for it.”
The cat even found his way into a box of doughnuts. “He had a doughnut in his mouth like ‘this is mine,’” Caroline recalled.
But despite the cats’ names, they’re mini no more. Caroline told TODAY.com that Pico now weighs about 18 pounds, surpassing the once-micro Mu by a pound or two. The big kitties better stay spry, as the Ryes’ 9-month-old daughter, Caitlin, is on the move. “She squeals when she chases them,” Caroline said.
Laurel and Paisley
Paisley and I have been Pet Partners since 2007. We like to read to children at the Upland Library and represent the Animal Health Foundation at community and county events.
Gorillas team up to destroy poacher’s traps
Two young mountain gorillas in Rwanda joined forces to destroy primitive traps set by poachers after one of the snares killed a female infant gorilla. A tracker and a group of tourists witnessed the event, which officials said was the first time juveniles had been seen dismantling a snare. “Chimpanzees are always quoted as being the tool users, but I think, when the situation provides itself, gorillas are quite ingenious,” said veterinarian Mike Cranfield, executive director of the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project.
The story is at: National Geographic News
Geneva and Bonnie
Geneva and Bonnie have been registered since 2005. She and Bonnie visit a teen shelter and go to school events.