1,721,300 research outputs found
A peculiar morphological alteration of canine neutrophils
No full textBackground: Multiple thin nuclear projections in canine blood neutrophils, here named “hairy”, have been anecdotally observed during routine hematology. A similar alteration has been described in people with hypercortisolism.
Objective: To determine the analytical aspects of hairy neutrophils (HN) and their possible association with suspected hypercortisolism.
Methods: Intra-observer repeatability and effects of stains were evaluated on both Hemacolor-stained smears (HSS) and May Grünwald-Giemsa-stained smears (MSS). Inter-observer repeatability was evaluated by two independent operators on HSS. The frequency of HNs and the possible association with suspected hypercortisolism was assessed on 223 HSS from dogs with normal (N=106) or high alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity (N=117). Cohen’s K, Wilcoxon signed rank, and Spearman tests were performed to respectively evaluate concordance, differences between stains, operators or “ALP groups”, and correlations. Results: HNs were more visible on HSS, that provided higher counts than MSS, although without statistical significance. Intra-observer coefficient of variations ranged from 8 to 10% with higher values at low HN counts. Inter-operator concordance was good (k: 0.73). Results of the operators were significantly different (P=0.015) but correlated (p<0.001, r=0.625). HNs were detected on 74/223 cases (33.2%). The HN count was higher in dogs with high (58.2%) than in dogs with normal ALP (43.4%; P=<0.001) and in dogs with very high (3 X URL) (67.6%) than in dogs with high-normal ALP (48.1%, P=0.007).
Conclusions: HN can be found in dogs, especially in HSS. Finding HN should prompt to measure ALP activity and, if high, to investigate the possible presence of hypercortisolism
A modified method to evaluate, using the Sysmex-XT2000iV, the “delta WBC” on supernatants of centrifuged feline effusions
No full text
A Reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) assay for feline coronavirus
No full textBACKGROUND
Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is a gene amplification technique that amplifies DNA in only one hour and under isothermal conditions, using a DNA polymerase with strand displacement activityand six primers targeting eight regions of the template sequence.
AIM OF THE WORK
The aim of this study was to develop a reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification assay for a rapid and inexpensive detection of feline coronavirus (FCoV).
METHODS
Six primers binding the 3' untranslated region (3'UTR) of the FCoV were designed. Thirty-two samples of RNA from cats (11 feces, 8 effusions, 9 blood samples and 4 tissues) were analyzed and a nested reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (nRT-PCR) targeting the 3'UTR was also performed. The reaction mixture was incubated in a thermocycler at 63°C for 1 hour followed by 10 minutes at 80°C. LAMP results were evaluated both after electrophoresis migration on agarose gel stained with ethidium bromide and by naked eye after the addition of the hydroxynaphtol blue (HNB) dye. Results were compared with the nRTPCR, considered the gold standard.
RESULTS
The specificity was 100% on all specimens, while the sensitivity was 100% only on tissues. The overall sensitivity was 52.4% and 50% with gel electrophoresis and HNB, respectively. Discrepant results between the two visualization methods were recorded.
DISCUSSION/CONCLUSIONS
Except for tissues, the low sensitivity of the LAMP assay for FCoV limits a clinical application of this method. Additional experiments are needed in order to assess the analytical sensitivity and to develop a quantitative visualization technique
Frequency of electrophoretic changes consistent with feline infectious peritonitis in two different time periods (2004-2009 vs 2013-2014)
Full text linkOBJECTIVES:
The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the frequency of electrophoretic changes in serum of cats with feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) changed in recent years vs past years.
METHODS:
Agarose gel electrophoresis (AGE) and capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) from cats with FIP and healthy cats recorded in the periods 2004-2009 and 2013-2014 were retrospectively analysed. Relative and absolute values of each electrophoretic fraction were recorded and the number of cats showing single or combined electrophoretic changes consistent with FIP (hypoalbuminaemia, inverted albumin to globulin [A:G] ratio, increased total protein, total globulin, alpha (α)2-globulin and gamma (γ)-globulin concentration) were counted. Additionally, a visual analysis of electrophoretograms was also performed. Results for the two time periods were statistically compared.
RESULTS:
The details of 91 AGE procedures (41 from cats with FIP and 50 from healthy cats) and 45 CZE procedures (26 from cats with FIP and 19 from healthy cats) were obtained from the database. No significant differences between the two time periods were found both in FIP and in healthy cats analysed with CZE and in healthy cats analysed with AGE. Compared with 2004-2009, cats with FIP sampled in 2013-2014 with AGE showed a significantly lower concentration of total protein, γ-globulins and total globulins, and a significantly higher A:G ratio and percentage of albumin and α2-globulins. Using both AGE and CZE, in recent years the proportion of cats with high α2-globulins without gammopathy and the proportion of cats with gammopathy alone decreased. With a visual approach, the number of patterns considered as dubious increased in the second period with AGE (non-statistically significant).
CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE:
The frequency of electrophoretic abnormalities in cats with FIP decreased in recent years, independently of the technique employed. Although the mechanism responsible for this change was not investigated in this study, this altered frequency may decrease the diagnostic accuracy of serum protein electrophoresis for FIP
Reverse transcriptase loop-mediated isothermal amplification for the detection of feline coronavirus
No full textThe Feline coronavirus (FCoV) is the etiological agent of feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), a lethal disease of felids. The role of molecular methods is controversial for the diagnosis of FIP, while essential for the identification of the shedders. Thus, a fast and inexpensive method for the detection of FCoV could be beneficial, especially in multicat environments. A reverse transcription loop mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) assay was developed. RNA extraction and RT-nPCR for FCoV were performed on thirty-two samples (11 faeces, 9 blood, 8 effusions, and 4 lymph nodes) collected from 27 cats. Six RT-LAMP primers were designed from the same conserved region of RT-nPCR, and the assay was run at 63 °C for one hour. Results were evaluated through both agarose gel run and hydroxynapthol blue (HNB) dye and then compared with RT-nPCR results for the assessment of sensitivity and specificity. The overall specificity was 100%, but the sensitivity was 50% and 54.5% for agarose gel and HNB respectively. Therefore, RT-LAMP seems optimal to confirm the presence of the virus, but not applicable to exclude it
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
I corpora di apprendenti e la didattica: la selezione dell’ausiliare nei tempi composti
No full textLa ricerca sui corpora di apprendenti può dare indicazioi utili alla didattica dell'italiano a stranieri perché mostra l'evoluzione interlinguistica di alcuni tratti chiave della morfosintassi
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