Today's Veterinary Practice

NOV-DEC 2015

Today's Veterinary Practice provides comprehensive information to keep every small animal practitioner up to date on companion animal medicine and surgery as well as practice building and management.

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Today's VeTerinary PracTice | november/december 2015 | tvpjournal.com Journal club 96 Focus on Infectious Diseases Journal club Previous large-scale epidemiologic studies of leptospirosis in dogs evaluated risk factors over a long period. Several studies reported in the 2000s indicated that changes in patient signalment and risk factors were occurring, including increased odds of disease in urban areas. This retrospective study aimed to evaluate prevalence and signalment of dogs with leptospirosis over a 40-year period. Study Re S ult S • The Veterinary Medical Databases (vmdb.org) was searched; of 1,658,055 hospital visits at 26 veterinary teaching hospitals between 1970 and 2009, 1091 dogs were diagnosed with leptospirosis. Overall prevalence was calculated and then compared by age, sex, weight, or breed group in multivariate analyses. • Canine leptospirosis prevalence peaked in 1971, decreased in the 1980s and 1990s, and has been increasing since the 2000s. • In the 2000s, dogs aged 7 to 9.9 years had the highest prevalence of infection. Prevalence was also highest in dogs weighing less than 15 pounds and in the terrier breed group. Among small breeds in the 2000s, the Yorkshire terrier had the highest prevalence. • These results are in contrast to those seen in the 1970s, in which prevalence did not differ widely across age groups, was highest in dogs weighing 30 to 49.9 pounds and 50 to 79.9 pounds, and was highest in mixed breed dogs. ConCluSionS The epidemiology of canine leptospirosis has changed substantially since the 1970s, and hospital prevalence per 100,000 cases has increased since the 1980s and 1990s at veterinary teaching hospitals. Dogs with clinical signs compatible with leptospirosis, no matter the signalment, should be tested for this zoonotic disease. Signalment Changes in Canine Leptospirosis Between 1970 and 2009 Lee HS, Guptill L, Johnson AJ, Moore GE. J Vet Intern Med 2014; 28(2):294-299. it seems to be getting harder and harder for veterinarians to "keep up." advances in technology result in ongoing discoveries every week, and the number of journals with important information appears to grow exponentially. in this Journal club column, some key articles about infectious diseases are highlighted. you may not have come across them in your day-to-day reading, but these articles should change the way you think about diagnosing and treating your patients. Lee and colleagues remind us that some of the things we know aren't always so. The authors elegantly evaluate a large number of cases and conclude that the dogma stating that leptospirosis is a disease only of large breed dogs is just not true. Foy and colleagues highlight the utility and limitations of a Blastomyces antigen assay during and after treatment. This assay was a helpful tool that is an adjunct to, but not a replacement for, the history and physical and radiographic examination for recognition of clinical remission. after achieving clinical remission, some dogs may have low concentrations of residual antigen in urine, which do not necessarily predict a relapse. Lappin and colleagues provide insight into the management of immune and allergic disease in cats. cyclosporine did not result in disease recrudescence or oocyst shedding in cats that were infected with Toxoplasma gondii prior to cyclosporine administration. However, cats treated with cyclosporine before infection with T gondii appeared to be at higher risk for severe disease. Therefore, screening cats for exposure to T gondii prior to cyclosporine treatment should be considered. Savidge and colleagues remind us that the infectious disease landscape is constantly changing. Many of us would have never thought to test a febrile cat for anaplasmosis and, before the last decade, there was no easy way to test for this infection. Beugnet, Reichard, and their colleagues published papers that are a testament to acaricidal agents. not only do we live in a time with effective topical, oral, and wearable options, but we are fnally generating evidence that these products can actually reduce the risk for disease transmission. This is something we have assumed (and probably marketed on) in the past. now we have evidence that we are both reducing the "ick" factor of ectoparasites and practicing excellent preventive medicine. —Adam J. Birkenheuer, DVM, PhD, Diplomate ACVIM (Small Animal Internal Medicine) North Carolina State University

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