veterinary medicine

Apr 23, 2013

Bartonellosis: Diagnosing a Stealth Pathogen

NC State professor of veterinary internal medicine Ed Breitschwerdt has spent the last couple of decades working with Bartonella, bacteria historically associated with “cat scratch disease.” Bartonella is increasingly recognized as a cause of persistent intravascular infection that can result in severe health effects. Research from Breitschwerdt’s laboratory and others has led to the discovery of… 

Apr 11, 2013

New Flu Review 2: How Do You Measure Lethality?

Editor’s Note: You may hear about fatality rates or percentages when media report on new and dangerous flu strains, and often times the reports are conflicting. In this post, Barrett Slenning, an epidemiologist at NC State, explains how these fatality rates are calculated, and why the numbers may fluctuate. A previous post on H7N9 flu can… 

Apr 10, 2013

New Flu Review

The new strain of avian flu – known as H7N9 – has only been on scientists’ radar for a couple of weeks, but that’s been long enough to raise some questions.  NC State epidemiology expert Barrett Slenning, who spends a lot of time looking at the ways in which pathogens transfer from animals to people, was… 

Jan 16, 2013

Nifty Image of the Day – Neurons!

Troy Ghashghaei, assistant professor in NC State’s Department of Molecular Biomedical Sciences and researcher in the Center for Comparative Medicine and Translational Research, wanted to know more about the function of Sp2, a cell cycle regulator that helps control how cells divide. Using genetic tools, Ghashghaei’s team got rid of Sp2 in certain neural stem cells in… 

Nov 12, 2012

Pet Rehab: Goat on a Treadmill

It’s not an uncommon story:  A family pet comes down with a serious illness. The pet’s owners pursue treatment and rehabilitation, the pet improves and everyone gets a happy ending. Except in this case the pet is a goat, and the rehabilitation is being done – in part – on an underwater treadmill normally used… 

Jun 14, 2012

The Strain Remains the Same

Sid Thakur is an expert on the kinds of pathogens that like to make their homes in and around our pig populations. He spends most of his time testing the pigs and their environment, identifying potential dangers such as Campylobacter – a nasty little critter that we definitely don’t want in our food supply, particularly… 

Jun 1, 2012

Bartonella: The Epidemic You’ve Never Heard Of, Part 3

This is the final installment of a three-part series on Bartonella, bacteria that are being linked to a wide variety of ailments – many of them chronic, and some of them life-threatening. In part one, we talked about what Bartonella is, and its growing recognition as a potentially wide-ranging and serious infectious disease. Part two… 

May 30, 2012

Bartonella: The Epidemic You’ve Never Heard Of, Part 1

This is the first installment of a three-part series on Bartonella, bacteria that is being linked to a wide variety of ailments – many of them chronic, and some of them life-threatening. In part one, I’ll talk about what Bartonella is, and its growing recognition as a potentially very serious infectious disease. Part two will… 

May 7, 2012

Cytauxzoonosis on the “Up-Tick”

You may not have heard of Cytauxzoonosis (pronounced Sight-Oh-zO-un-Osis) before, but if you’re a cat owner, you should definitely pay attention now. Cytauxzoonosis is a tick-borne, malaria-like illness that, if left untreated, has an almost 100 percent mortality rate in cats. It is caused by the parasite Cytauxzoon felis, found in ticks carried by host… 

Nov 1, 2011

Harms Wins Service Award

Dr. Craig Harms, associate professor of aquatic, wildlife and zoological medicine, received a meritorious service award from Iowa State University. 

Oct 27, 2011

Flu Version 2.0

Every year, it seems the CDC warns us about a new flu variety, bandying about names that seem more like grid locations in a game of Battleship than actual descriptions:  H1N1, H2N1, and now H5N1 – or technically, H5N1 2.3.2.1. This new form of so-called “bird flu” is a highly pathogenic and dangerous strain of… 

Aug 31, 2011

Leapin’ Lizards

If you live in the southeastern U.S., you see these little guys (and gals) everywhere – the ubiquitous green or brown Anole lizard known scientifically as Anolis carolinensis. But aside from being cute and able to regenerate part of its tail, this little lizard – and its newly sequenced genome – may help scientists solve… 

Jun 13, 2011

Knick-Knack, Paddy-Whack, Save a Dog a Bone…

And we’re not talking soup bones. Osteosarcoma is the most common canine bone cancer, with tumors generally appearing on the dog’s front limbs, above the wrist joint.  Veterinarians can treat osteosarcoma, but in many cases the treatment involves amputation, a particular challenge for dogs with additional health problems that may affect their balance or mobility,… 

Mar 11, 2011

We Have Found the Enemy and It Is Us

If you suffer from preeclampsia during pregnancy, it could be because your body is fighting against itself. New research from Dr. Jorge Piedrahita, NC State professor of genomics, has found that the placentas of women diagnosed with preeclampsia have more of a gene associated with regulating the body’s immune response than  the placentas of women who… 

Jan 13, 2011

Show and Tell

We’re probably all very familiar with the old school – as in kindergarten level – version of show and tell.  Now, scientific publishing has caught up with that concept, and neurobiologist Dr. Troy Ghashghaei is  the first from NC State to take advantage of this new way of communicating scientific methods by publishing in the Journal…