Diagnosis and prevalence of neosporosis in cattle in Northern Ireland.

Abstract

Treatment of osteoarthritis in dogs FORTY dogs with chronic osteoarthritis took part in a double- blind trial of the anti-arthritic agent pentosan polysulphate. They received four doses of either a placebo or 1, 3 or 5 mg/kg of the agent, administered subcutaneously at weekly intervals. During the treatment and four weeks after the last dose the dogs were scored for weakness, stiffness, pain when the joints were manipu- lated, willingless to exercise and body condition. In comparison with the dogs receiving the placebo all the dogs receiving pentosan polysulphate improved; the 3 mg/kg dose gave the best response, 1 mg/kg gave a partial response and 5 mg/kg was the least effective dose. READ, R. A., CULLIS-HILL, D. & JONES, M. P. (1996) Journal of Small Animal Practice 37, 108 Determination of plasma pepsinogen THE measurement of plasma pepsinogen concentration is useful as an aid to the diagnosis of parasitic gastritis in ruminants; this paper compares four methods. Three of them were colourimetric assays which used albumin, glycine-buffered albumin or haemoglobin as their substrate, and the fourth was a radial diffu- sion assay which used casein in agarose as its substrate. All four methods gave reproducible results when replicates were assayed on the same day. However, the method using glycine-buffered albumin had the least day-to-day variation and was the only one to give a linear relationship with different concentrations of pepsino- gen in a plasma pool. SCOTT, 1., STEAR, M. J. & McKELLAR, Q. A. (1995) Research in Veterinary Science 59, 234 Treatment of traumatic shock in dogs A SOLUTION of 7 per cent sodium chloride in 6 per cent dextran 70 was compared with lactated Ringer's solution for the treatment of groups of eight dogs with traumatic shock. The groups of dogs responded similarly to the two solutions and the results suggested that the sodium chloride in dextran solution may reduce the need for supplementary isotonic fluids during the first few hours after initial resuscitation. Apart from mild bradyarrhythmias in two of the dogs receiving the hypertonic solution there were no adverse side effects. SCHERTEL, E. R., ALLEN, D. A., MUIR, W. W. & HANSEN, B. D. (1996) Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 208, 366 420