One Health

Cattle drug may help tackle river blindness

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A veterinary drug that kills worms in cattle may also fight river blindness, a debilitating parasitic infection that afflicts 37 million people worldwide, researchers say. But experts caution against trying the compound in humans just yet. People contract river blindness, also known as onchocerciasis, when bitten by black flies that carry a nematode known as Onchocerca volvulus. The worm larvae mature and mate, producing up to 1000 "microfillariae" offspring per day, which migrate to the surface of the skin and to the eyes. When the microfillariae die, they cause itchy lesions that can lead to blindness. The disease often forces farmers to abandon lush river valleys rife with infected black flies for less fertile areas.

Doctors currently treat river blindness with ivermectin, a drug that kills the microfillariae and lowers the fertility of the adult worms. Ivermectin has slashed cases of blindness and lesions in countries like Senegal and Mali. But ivermectin doesn't target the nearly-mature worms that cause new infections from a black fly's bite. Instead, the drug controls the symptoms until the worms eventually die out. Scientists are still searching for a compound that would block infection altogether, for example by killing the adolescent worms upon arrival.
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Vermont (USA) Pediatrician Provides Model for Advancing One Health Principles

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On March 8, 2010 an e-mail message to Dean Joan Hendricks, prominent One Health supporter/advocate at the University of Pennsylvania school of veterinary medicine in Philadelpia, Pennsylvania (USA) from John Trumper, MD, a longstanding valued One Health supporter in the state of Vermont modestly advised Dr. Hendricks of his remarkable One Health activities this past year.

Dr. Trumper told Dr. Hendricks:
“It's been a year since you helped us launch our One Health Initiative up here, and I promised then to give you some follow up.

We have been concentrating on communicating at the practitioner level of physicians and [veterinarians]. At the state society level, there was a brief One Health Initiative (OHI) presentation at the State Medical Society meeting last fall. I attended the State Veterinary Society meeting, and we now include a veterinarian presenter at the Academy of Pediatrics spring meeting and [veterinarians] are invited to all our membership meetings.

To help at the local community level, we formed a joint committee that meets every 2 months or so and has developed a power point presentation on OHI that [veterinarians] can use at local hospital presentations to physicians. There have been just two talks by [veterinarians] at local hospitals so far, with two more scheduled in April. Subjects have included: "Animal Bites from the Perpetrators Point of View", "People, Pets, & Parasites," and The Raw Milk Sale Debate. We have a request for a speaker on The Ididerad, and on pet obesity and childhood obesity; a connection?

The local veterinarians are invited to all these local hospital presentations and so far attendance by both groups has been gratifying. So, we have a long way to go, but our modest plans of starting at the local level, thanks to your help, are underway.”

Note: The One Health team of Laura H. Kahn, MD, MPH, MPP, Bruce Kaplan, DVM, Thomas P. Monath, MD and Jack Woodall, PhD strongly endorses Dr. Trumper’s model activities and hope that other visionary physicians nationally and internationally will consider following suit.

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Improving malaria diagnosis and treatment

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WHO is releasing the first ever guidance on procuring safe and efficient anti-malarial medicines. The guidelines will help countries select and obtain effective, good quality medicines and save lives by improving the way patients are diagnosed and treated.

Read the news release on the new malaria guidelines
Read the guidelines for treatment of malaria

Frequently Asked Questions about Antimicrobial Use and Antimicrobial Resistance

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Antimicrobial use and antimicrobial resistance are hot issues in the news right now, and there's a lot of confusion and misinformation in the media and on the Internet. With these FAQs, we hope to clear up some of the confusion and provide you with science-based information to help you make educated decisions.

Healthy animals make healthy food, and veterinarians are on the frontlines when it comes to keeping our nation's food supply safe. Advances in animal health care and management have greatly improved food safety over the years and have reduced the need for antimicrobials in food production systems. Nevertheless, antimicrobials are an important part of the veterinarian's toolkit, and veterinarians agree that they should be used judiciously and in the best interest of animal health and public health.

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Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 outbreak on pig farm, Argentina

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In June–July 2009, an outbreak of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 infection occurred on a pig farm in Argentina. Molecular analysis indicated that the virus was genetically related to the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza virus strain. The outbreak presumably resulted from direct human-to-pig transmission. Swine influenza viruses (SIVs) occur worldwide; they usually cause asymptomatic infection but occasionally cause outbreaks of varying intensity.

In North America, the landscape of swine influenza has changed substantially since the late 1990s, when human (H3N2) viruses were first isolated from swine and triple reassortant viruses carrying influenza genes (TRIG) of avian, swine, and human origin and showing great reassortment flexibility emerged concurrently. TRIGs of influenza subtypes H3N2, H1N1, H3N1, and H1N2 appear to be circulating in swine in North America. Coincidentally, 1 of these TRIG viruses led to emergence of the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus.

Testing by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency identified pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus in a swine herd in Alberta. The pigs may have been exposed to the virus by a farm worker who returned from Mexico with influenza-like symptoms. Affected pigs showed clinical signs of infection with SIV.

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Healthy prions protect nerves

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After 20 years of research, scientists believe they have finally uncovered the normal function of prion proteins, which can cause deadly illnesses such as Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) if they become incorrectly folded. An international team of neuroscientists reports that, in mammals, the mysterious proteins help to maintain the myelin sheath that protects the body's nerves. "This opens a new door to studying some of the many common neuropathy disorders — which lead to weakness or loss of sensitivity of limbs — where we don't know the cause," says prion expert Simon Mead at University College London's Institute of Neurology.

The authors suspect that their finding also applies to brain neurons. If so, this would have implications for treating deadly CJD and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. It could also offer a new way of looking at multiple sclerosis, an incurable disease caused by demyelination of nerves in the brain and spinal cord. The work is published online in Nature Neuroscience.

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Gorillas carry malignant malaria parasite

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The parasite that causes malignant malaria in humans has been detected in gorillas, along with two new species of malaria parasites, reports a study co-authored by UC Irvine biologist Francisco Ayala. The study also confirms a recent discovery by Ayala and colleagues that human malignant malaria, caused by Plasmodium falciparum, originated from a closely related parasite found in chimpanzees in equatorial Africa. P. falciparum is responsible for 85 percent of malignant malaria infections in humans and nearly all deaths from the disease. The researchers cautioned that increased contact between primates and humans -- mostly because of logging and deforestation -- creates a greater risk of new parasites being transmitted to humans. It also could further jeopardize endangered ape populations by spreading diseases to them. Finding P. falciparum in gorillas also complicates the challenge of eradicating malaria.

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How sunlight causes skin cells to turn cancerous

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Most skin cancers are highly curable, but require surgery that can be painful and scarring. A new study by Loyola University Health System researchers could lead to alternative treatments that would shrink skin cancer tumors with drugs. The drugs would work by turning on a gene that prevents skin cells from becoming cancerous, said senior author Mitchell Denning, Ph.D. The study was published Jan. 15, 2010 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. More than 1 million people in the United States are diagnosed with skin cancer each year. In the new study, researchers examined a type of skin cancer, called squamous cell carcinoma, that accounts for between 200,000 and 300,000 new cases per year. Squamous cell carcinoma begins in the upper part of the epidermis, the top layer of the skin.

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Vets call for government funding following pig Hendra link

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With the release this week of research showing that pigs can catch the deadly Hendra virus, the Australian Veterinary Association (AVA) is calling for more funding for biosecurity research.

The Canadian study which will appear in the journal Veterinary Research shows that pigs are susceptible to Hendra, and points to the threat of pigs as intermediate hosts of the virus.

“This research is a clear pointer to the potential risks of the spread of the disease from pigs to humans,” said Dr Mark Lawrie, President of the AVA.

“Cases of the spread of disease from bats to pigs to humans have already occurred in Australia with a serious outbreak of the Menangle virus in the late 1990s,” said Dr Lawrie.

“The same method of transmission for the closely related Nipah virus occurred in Malaysia.

“This new research reveals a real risk that the same might happen with Hendra virus. But we need much more research to know how big the risk is, and the best way to manage it.

“This is an important public health issue” said Dr Lawrie.

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Best Management Practices for Pharmaceutical Disposal

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AVMA policy

Minimize unused pharmaceuticals:
- Maintain close inventory control to decrease expired/unused drugs.
- Write prescriptions for infrequently used drugs to prevent expirations.
- Consider assigning responsibility for inventory control and disposal to one or a limited number of staff members.
- Whenever possible, return drugs nearing expiration to the distributor.

Follow federal and state guidelines for disposal of controlled substances and hazardous waste.

Incineration typically provides the highest level of best management.

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