The QRS response of the electrocardiogram to bleeding has been a source of interest to the physiologist for more than a century. Studies in the dog, cat and chicken have shown a reduction in QRS amplitude in response to bleeding. This effect has been explained by the so-called Brody effect, in which the intraventricular mass of blood acts as a conducting medium, augmenting radial conduction, thus resulting in the subsequent reduction in QRS amplitude in conditions where the intraventricular mass of blood is reduced. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the Brody effect will be present in the ovine heart and, furthermore, to evaluate if the right and left ventricles will demonstrate the same QRS change if the Brody effect is indeed present. This study clearly demonstrated that the Brody effect is present in the ovine heart. Furthermore, two unique aspects emanating from this study are firstly the fact that this is the first study to show that premature ventricular complexes are able to induce the Brody effect and, secondly that there is a very clear difference in the response of the right and the left ventricles when the Brody effect is induced in the ovine heart.

This study was performed to evaluate repeated-dose oral toxicities of Chelidonium majus extract in Fischer 344/N rats. Chelidonium majus extract was administered orally to rats at dose levels of 0, 25, 74, 222, 666 and 2,000 mg/kg/day. Each group consisted of 10 rats of each gender. The Chelidonium majus extract was given once a day, 5 times a week, for 90 day repeatedly. This study was conducted in accordance with the Protocol of Korea National Toxicology Program (issued by National Institute of Toxicological Research) and The Standards of Toxicity Study for Medicinal Products (issued by Korea Food and Drug Administration). In the present study, There were no toxicologically significant changes in mortality, clinical signs, body weight gains, ophthalmoscopy, urine analysis, hematology, serum biochemistry, necropsy findings, organ weights, histopathology, estrus cycle and sperm examination of all animals treated with Chelidonium majus extract. These results suggest that the oral no observed adverse-effect level of the test item, Chelidonium majus extract, in rats is higher than 2.000 mg/kg/day in both genders. The target organs were not established.

The zebra shark Stegostoma fasciatum which had been reared in the commercial aquaria was found dead and submitted for postmortem examination. A pure bacterial culture was isolated from pale and enlarged liver. The analysis of ureC and 16S rRNA genes confirmed the isolate as Photobacterium (P.) damselae subsp. damselae and this pathogen was sensitive to gentamicin. Although, no mortality in mouse was observed in the experimental infection study, the isolation of this pathogen in aquarium fish is significant because it can act as a reservoir to other aquatic animals and can also be zoonotic potential to human during aquarium management. This paper describes the first isolation of P. dameselae subsp. damselae from zebra shark.

A 10-year old female Yorkshire terrier with nasal discharge and swelling was referred to the local animal hospital. Abnormal mass of right nasal cavity was detected in physical examination and radiography. According to the radiographs of the head, there was an evidence of bony destruction in right nose. Oronasal fistula was detected in right maxillary canine teeth. After surgical excision, the sample of nasal mass was refereed to Pathology Department of Veterinary Medicine in Jeju National University. Grossly, the enlarged mass was soft and 3 × 3 cm in size. Histopathologically, the neoplastic mass was composed of tubular to tubulopapillary structures which were lined by single to 6~7 layers of cuboidal to ciliated columnar cells. These neoplastic cells showed invasive tendency to adjacent normal parenchyma. They had uniform, round to oval nuclei, cytoplasm with small vacuoles and indistinct cellular margin. The number of mitotic figures was varied in different areas, ranged from 0 to 4 per high power field. Necrotic foci and infiltration of inflammatory cells including neutrophils, lymphocytes, and plasma cells also presented in the mass. Immunohistochemically, the neoplastic cells demonstrated strong positive reaction for cytokeratin (CK) 18 but were negative for CK 7 and 8. Based on the gross, histopathology and immunohistochemistry, this mass was diagnosed as nasal adenocarcinoma originated from respiratory epithelium.

This study examined the therapeutic effects of aromatherapy for the treatment of otitis externa in dogs. Eleven dogs with otitis externa were examined. The control group (5 dogs) was treated with susceptible antibiotics, and the experimental group (6 dogs) was treated with aroma-oil applied topically to the ear canal. The aroma-oil contained 10 ml sweet almond oil, 0.3 ml bergamot oil, 0.2 ml lavender oil, 0.1 ml tea tree oil and 0.1 ml roman chamomile oil. The blended aroma-oil (0.1 ml) was applied to the ear canal twice daily for 2 weeks. The authors examined the changes in the clinical signs, bacterial count in discharges, total WBC count and neutrophil/lymphocyte ratios in the two groups. The bacterial cell counts in the experimental group were significantly lower at one (p less than 0.01) and two weeks (p less than 0.05) after treatment than the control group. These results suggest that aromatherapy is an effective and practical treatment for otitis externa in dogs.

In this study, occurrence of canine brucellosis was surveyed in kennels, indoor dogs and stray dogs in Korea, and infrequent restriction site-polymerase chain reaction (IRS-PCR) was applied to analyze DNA polymorphism of Brucella canis (B. canis) isolates. Among a total of 501 dogs tested, B. canis antibodies by both rapid screening agglutination with 2-mercaptoethanol (2-ME RSAT) and immunochromatographic assay were detected in only 14.1% of kennel dogs. There were no seropositive cases in indoor dogs and stray dogs. DNA polymorphism was observed in 16 B. canis isolates by the IRS-PCR. Sixteen isolates were tested with primers, PsalA, PsalC, PsalG and PsalT, and different primers produced different DNA patterns. In regard to the IRS-PCR pattern of 16 isolates, 9 (56.3%) belonged to the IRS-PCR type I. The remaining 7 were differentiated as type Ⅱ, Ⅲ and Ⅳ. An application of the primer PsalC provided discrimination between B. canis isolated in 2005 and others.

Paratuberculosis caused by Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (Mpt) is a chronic infectious enteric disease with deleterious impact on the performance in ruminants. In Korea, ELISA has been introduced to detect antibodies to Mpt in individual cattle. However, comparison study with ELISA has not been studied until now. In total, a panel of 899 serum samples obtained from dairy cattle was analyzed with two commercial ELISAs for Mpt to assess the performance. Two ELISAs employed in this study were both licensed worldwide. Two ELISAs applied onto same serum samples showed the morderate agreement (kappa value = 0.06). There was non-significant McNemar test (p=0.0614) between two ELISA results indicating that each proportion detected by two kits did not differ. In addition, the percent agreement between two ELISA results was turned out to be 96.8% which interpreted excellent reproducibility. It was shown from this study that two ELISAs revealed moderate kappa agreement performance. The implication raised is that when ELISAs as diagnostics are used to detect Mpt in individual cattle, positive reaction by either ELISA should be interpreted as serologically Mpt positive due to presumed low sensitivity of ELISAs and their test agreement being less than 100%.

The objective of this study was to analyze data from the planned national serological monitoring program for Aujeszky's disease (AD) using a simulation model to evaluate probable outcomes expected in the sample derived from the simulated herds at predefined within-herd prevalence and herd prevalence. Additionally, prevalence at animal- and herd-level estimated by the stochastic simulation model based on the distributions of the proportion of infected herds and test-positive animals was compared with those of data from a national serological survey in 2006, in which 106,762 fattening pigs from 5,325 herds were tested for AD using a commercial ELISA kit. A fixed value of 95% was used for test sensitivity, and the specificity was modeled with a minimum, most likely and maximum of 95, 97 and 99%, respectively. The within-herd prevalence and herd prevalence was modeled using Pert and Triang distributions, respectively with a minimum, most likely and maximum point values. In all calulations, population size of 1,000 was used due to lack of representative information. The mean number of infected herds and true test-positives was estimated to be 27 herds (median=25; 95% percentile 44) and 214 pigs (median=196; 95% percentile 423), respectively. When testing 20 pigs (mean of 2006 survey) in each herd, there was a 3.3% probability that the potential for false-positive reactions due to less than 100% specificity of the ELISA test would be detected. It was found that the model showed prevalence of 0.21% (99% percentile 0.50%) and 0.5% (99% percentile 0.99%) at animal- and herd-level, respectively. These rates were much similar to data from the 2006 survey (0.62% versus 0.83%). The overall mean herd-level sensitivity of the 2006 survey for fattening pigs was 99.9%, with only a 0.2% probability of failing to detect at least one infected herd.

Human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA) is caused by the obligate intracellular bacterium Anaplasma (A.) phagocytophilm. Natural killer T (NKT) cells are key players in host defense against various microbial infections. We investigated the role of NKT cells in immune response to A. phagocytophilum infection using NKT-knockout (Jα18-/-) mice. Jα18-/- and wild-type (WT) mice were infected with low-passage A. phagocytophilum and assayed for hepatic histopathology and cytokine production during 7 days post-infection. Compared to WT control, the infected Jα18-/- mice had much less histopathologic lesions and less apoptosis through day 7, and lower concentrations of IFN-γ and IL-12, but not of IL-10. This result suggests that NKT cells are major components in the pathogenesis of HGA.

In this study, we evaluated the stability and potency of live attenuated rinderpest vaccines of lapinized-avianized tissue culture strain origin, which had been produced annually from 2005 to 2008. When immune responses to the vaccines were evaluated using two Holstein calves weighing 100~150 kg, neutralizinng antibody titer of 1 : 16 was induced at 21 days post vaccination. When calves were also inoculated with vaccines lots that had been stored for 39 months at 4℃, same level of antibody titer was observed. Using the virus titer test, we found that all batches of the vaccine that had been kept for 3, 10, 15, 22, 27, 34, 39, and 45 months showed no significant loss of titers, and fulfilled the requirement necessary (greater-than or equal to 3 logTCID∧50) to be used as the national rinderpest vaccine reserve in Korea. In this study, we demonstrated that stability and potency of the rinderpest vaccines were maintained over three years when kept at 4℃ storage. This indicates that it maybe feasible to extend the expiration period of this vaccine from one year to three years.