Eleven pairs of canine metacarpal bones, 10 pairs of metatarsal bones, and 7 pairs of ribs were harvested cleanly and prepared for banking at -20 C for 1 year. One bone of each pair was randomly assigned to 1 type of storage: plastic pack vs immersion in a normal solution of sodium chloride. The contralateral bone was assigned to the opposite treatment. Six pairs of metacarpal bones and 5 pairs of metatarsal bones were tested in torsion to failure. No significant difference was found within pairs. All ribs, 5 pairs of metacarpal bones, and 5 pairs of metatarsal bones were loaded in 4-point bending to failure. The energy absorbed at failure and the ultimate displacement of ribs and metacarpal and metatarsal bones were increased by 25 to 30% and 18 to 24%, respectively, when the bones were frozen in isotonic saline solution. Corticocancellous grafts frozen in normal saline solution are biomechanically less fragile and brittle than grafts stored in plastic without saline solution.

Bovine immunodeficiency virus (BIV), a lentivirus, is prevalent in dairy and beef cattle in southeastern United States and may be associated with a lymphoproliferative disease. The mode(s) of BIV transmission are undefined. Because artificial insemination is a common practice in dairy production, contaminated stud semen could serve as an important source of infection if the virus is harbored in seminal fluids. To evaluate this possibility, we procured 11 cryopreserved semen specimens from a stud semen repository. Leukocytes were purified from the specimens, and the leukocyte DNA was used as template in a polymerase chain reaction procedure that targeted a 235-base pair, highly conserved domain of the BIV pol gene. The target sequence was amplified from the seminal leukocyte DNA of 9 of the specimens (82%), and nucleotide sequencing confirmed the BIV specificity of the fragment. This finding provides evidence that stud bull semen may serve as an important reservoir of BIV, suggesting the possibility that artificial insemination of dairy cows may have a major role in transmission and wide-spread dissemination of this bovine lentivirus.