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The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and WebMD have teamed up to launch a pet health community called the Pet Health Exchange. Visitors to the new site can discuss pet health issues with AVMA member veterinarians.

"The AVMA is concerned about the vast amount of misinformation about pet health that can be found on the Internet," explains Dr. Larry R. Corry, president of the AVMA. "Through this collaboration with an established and respected resource, we hope to give pet owners an opportunity to get accurate, sound advice about animals in general and, more specifically, about their pets."

More than 20 veterinary Guest Experts are involved in the Healthy Pets Exchange to date. The Guest Experts encourage discussion and help owners ask the right questions of their pet's veterinarian to open a dialogue that can lead to the most appropriate diagnosis and treatments for their pets.

"The Pet Health Exchange will help pet owners keep up to date on pet information about their pet's health, so they can provide the very best care for their animals," says Dr. Corry. "But no online community, no matter how well it is done, can ever be a substitute for the relationship between veterinarians and their clients."

The link to the new Pet Health Exchange is on the upper right on the www.webmd.com, and you can also visit the new WebMD Health Pet Exchange directly at http://exchanges.webmd.com/pet-health-exchange. For any other information about veterinary medicine, please visit www.avma.org.

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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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Bacteria that infect chronic wounds can be deadly to maggot 'biosurgeons' used to treat the lesions, show researchers writing in the journal Microbiology. The findings could lead to more effective treatment of wounds and the development of novel antibiotics. Scientists from the Copenhagen Wound Healing Centre, Statens Serum Institut and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark showed that maggots applied to simulated wounds heavily infected with the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa, were unable to treat the wound and were left dead after 20 hours. Chronic wounds, such as leg ulcers, affect 1% of the Western population and are painful and difficult to treat.

Use of maggots to disinfect wounds is an ancient practice that regained popularity in the early 1990s. Maggot Debridement Therapy (MDT) is now a standard procedure at wound care centres all over the world, in which sterile larvae from the green bottle fly Lucilia sericata are applied to the wound either directly or contained within a sealed nylon bag. The maggots gently ingest necrotic (dead) tissue and kill ingested bacteria in the gut. In addition, the maggots secrete antimicrobial compounds into the wound, help reduce inflammation and promote wound healing. The actual biological mechanisms responsible for the process are still largely a mystery.

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Badger culling is unlikely to be a cost-effective way of helping control cattle TB in Britain, according to research published February 10 in PLoS ONE. The authors of the study, from Imperial College London and the Zoological Society of London, say their findings suggest that the benefits of repeated widespread badger culling, in terms of reducing the incidence of cattle TB, disappear within four years after the culling has ended.

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is a disease in cattle that has a serious financial impact on farmers in Britain, as infected animals have to be slaughtered. In 2008, 2,738 herds were infected with bTB, costing the government over £100 million. Wild badgers [Taxidea taxus, a nocturnal mammal of the weasel family] can become infected with bTB and are known to transmit the infection to cattle. Because of this, UK governments have tested various means of badger culling to control bTB infection in cattle over the past 30 years.

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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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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

"Future Challenges in Veterinary Medicine"
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In summer 2010, IVSA Denmark will be hosting the 59th annual Summer Congress.

It’s the third IVSA congress in Denmark, since the association was founded here in 1951.

Application for the congress opens March 1st on congress homepage www.ivsadenmark.dk

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Vets have welcomed the Government consultation on reforming dangerous dogs legislation but called on politicians not to let the issue become a political football during the forthcoming election campaign.

Responding to the announcement by the Home Secretary and Secretary of State for Environment Food and Rural Affairs that Defra will consult the public on reform of the legislation and compulsory microchipping, Professor Bill Reilly, President of the BVA, said:

“The BVA has been lobbying the Government and Opposition hard for a change in dangerous dogs legislation and so we are delighted that the Government is now considering reforming the hugely unpopular and ineffective Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.

“The BVA believes very strongly in the principle of deed not breed – targeting dogs for their actions, not what they look like – and we hope to see new legislation that tackles the actions of irresponsible pet owners that can cause dogs to become aggressive.

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The European Parliament has voted 618 votes to 17 for an extension to the transitional arrangements contained within the regulation on the non-commercial movement of pet animals (Reg. 998/2003) which afford the UK additional protection against rabies, ticks and tapeworms.

The British Veterinary Association (BVA) and British Small Animal Veterinary Association (BSAVA) have been lobbying MEPs to support the extension and have strongly welcomed this decision.

The transitional arrangements allow the UK to impose stricter measures on the entry of pet animals and are designed to protect the UK from rabies, ticks and tapeworms (Echinococcus multilocularis).

The vote in the European Parliament today supports an extension of these arrangements until the end of 2011 and puts in place a system so that permanent measures can be imposed in the future for entry to specific Member States based on scientific evidence. The decision will have to be ratified by the European Agriculture Council before coming into force.

Commenting, Professor Bill Reilly, President of the BVA, said:

“The Pet Travel Scheme affords the UK’s pet, wildlife and human populations protection from serious diseases and parasites and we have long argued for these arrangements to remain until scientific evidence can prove that the risk is manageable.

“The BVA and BSAVA have worked closely with Defra to secure this extension to the arrangements and we will now be pushing for investment in additional scientific research that will give us a clearer picture of the threat of the parasite Echinococcus multilocularis and other exotic and emerging diseases.”

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