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The objective of this study was to gather current, farmer-reported data on the frequency of occurrence, risk factors and treatment practices for the sheep eye disease, ovine infectious keratoconjunctivitis (OIKC). A questionnaire regarding eye disease in sheep was completed by 135 farmers from four livestock markets. Most farmers (87%) had observed OIKC in their flock, 88% of these within the last 2 years. Farmers reported observing most cases in the winter months (51%) and fewest in the summer (10%). They proposed housing and forage feeding from racks as factors associated with OIKC. A variety of treatment protocols were used by farmers. The three most popular treatments used were: cloxacillin eye ointment, intramuscular oxytetracycline injection and topical tetracycline spray applied to the eye. Only 62% of treatments were considered very effective by the farmers, with no difference in farmer perceived efficacy between these three most commonly used treatments (p=0.6). Farmers used 15 different terms to describe a photograph of a sheep with OIKC, including many colloquial terms. We hypothesise that this could result in communication problems between veterinary surgeons and farmers., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© British Veterinary Association 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.)

Clinical and subclinical hypocalcaemia are common in dairy cows, yet evidence in the literature assessing their impact on fertility is inconsistent. The aim of this prospective cohort study was to examine associations between blood ionised calcium concentration at calving and fertility outcomes in dairy cattle. Blood samples were taken from 137 Holstein cows from four commercial dairy herds within 24 hours of calving and analysed for blood ionised calcium using an Epocal Point of Care Analyser (Epocal, Ottawa, Canada). Data collected from routine veterinary fertility examinations and herd records were used to investigate the association of ionised calcium with the outcomes: time to first service, time to conception and endometritis. There were significant negative associations between blood ionised calcium concentration and time to first service (HR 1.33, P=0.001) and blood ionised calcium concentration and time to conception (HR 1.16, P=0.04). There was no significant association between blood ionised calcium concentration and endometritis. The results of this study imply that management policies that minimise the reduction in blood ionised calcium concentration in the periparturient dairy cow are likely to improve reproductive outcomes and should be considered as part of the multifactorial approach to optimising dairy cow fertility., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© British Veterinary Association (unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.)

The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical success of whole-flock systemic tilmicosin and enhanced biosecurity in eliminating active contagious ovine digital dermatitis (CODD) from sheep flocks. Thirty flocks in the UK were randomly allocated to receive either treatment as usual (as per the farmer's normal routine) or whole-flock treatment with tilmicosin, together with isolation and extended treatment of clinically affected individuals and isolation and treatment of purchased sheep during the study period. All flocks were visited once at onset of the trial to examine all sheep. One year later, all sheep were re-examined to determine the presence/absence of clinical lesions. The primary outcome was the clinical elimination of CODD from flocks. Secondary outcomes were reduction in prevalence of CODD, clinical elimination of footrot and reduction in prevalence of footrot. The analysis included 11 control flocks and 13 intervention flocks, with initially 3460 and 4686 sheep, respectively. For CODD: at follow-up, in the intervention group, 6/13 (46 per cent) flocks had a prevalence of zero compared with 1/11 (9 per cent) in the control group (P=0.12). For footrot: at follow-up, no flocks had a prevalence of zero. Therefore, the intervention is not recommended for the elimination of CODD or footrot in the UK., (British Veterinary Association.)

Three hundred and thirteen pet and smallholder pig owners in England responded to an online questionnaire regarding husbandry and healthcare of their pigs. There was a lack of knowledge of the legislation regarding Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) registration, animal movements and feeding of domestic food waste. Only 83.8 per cent of respondents had registered their pigs with DEFRA, while 17.7 per cent were not familiar with the movement regulations, and 23.9 per cent were feeding their pigs with household scraps. Contact with veterinary surgeons may be positively associated with DEFRA registration, legal feeding practices and knowledge of vaccination. Furthermore, the veterinary surgeon was considered to be the primary source of husbandry and healthcare knowledge. This paper identifies the pet and smallholder pig population as a potential risk for the incursion and spread of infectious disease, while highlighting the need for improved owner education., (British Veterinary Association.)

Umbilical swellings are commonly identified in calves and can be caused by hernia formation, infection of the remnants of umbilical vessels or a combination of both. Ninety-one cases with umbilical swellings were admitted to the Leahurst Farm Animal Practice (LFAP) between July 2004 and February 2012; 55 were simple hernias and 36 had associated infection. Eighty-seven cases underwent surgery of which 86 survived until discharge. Postoperative complications occurred in 65/86 animals (73 per cent). In 51 cases (81 per cent) this was classified as minor requiring no additional treatment. Placement of a prosthetic mesh was associated with a higher OR for developing severe postoperative complication when compared with those not receiving a mesh (OR=19.3; 95% CI 4.5 to 83.5). Long-term survival results were available for 49 animals, 22 of which were remaining in the herd with a median age of 1346 days (3.7 years). Of the 27 animals which had exited the herd, 16 were adult dairy cows, 7 were dairy heifers, 2 were beef animals and 2 exited at an unknown stage. Umbilical surgery in calves carries a good prognosis, although placement of a mesh increases the risk of complications occurring in the postoperative period.

The present study is a randomised split-flock treatment trial, which compared the effect of foot bathing in a 1 per cent solution of chlortetracycline alone with a treatment protocol that added a single injection of a long-acting amoxicillin. Overall, the prevalence of contagious ovine digital dermatitis in the examined flock was 22 per cent, while 45.7 per cent of affected sheep had infections in two or more feet. Parenteral antibiotic treatment increased the odds of a recovery by 3.8 times (95 per cent confidence interval 1.05 to 14.0) (P=0.008). Moreover, the amoxicillin injection may also have had a preventative effect, reducing the rate of establishment of new infections from 2.5 per cent for foot bathing alone compared with 1.0 per cent with the addition of parenteral amoxicillin.

Milk fever has been recognised in cattle for about 215 years and its clinical signs have not changed since they were described by Victorian veterinary surgeons in the mid-nineteenth century. It was only 80 years ago that abnormal parathyroid gland function was associated with the pathogenesis of the hypocalcaemia characteristic of the disease, and the current basis for its treatment with intravenous calcium salts was established. Although this treatment is effective, most recent research has focused on preventing the disease through an understanding of the endocrine control of extracellular calcium homeostasis. In the 1970s the synthetic vitamin D analogue 1alpha-hydroxycholecalciferol was developed for intramuscular injection before a cow calved, but variable results encouraged other preventive strategies to be considered, including restricting the dietary intake of calcium, and manipulating the dietary cation-anion balance of cows before they calved. Currently, the role of extracellular calcium receptors in the parathyroid gland is under investigation as a preliminary step to devising more effective treatments and/or preventive methods for milk fever.

The insect kinins are present in a wide variety of insects and function as potent diuretic peptides, though they are subject to rapid degradation by internal peptidases. Insect kinin analogs incorporating stereochemical variants of (2S,4S)-4-aminopyroglutamate (APy), a cis-peptide bond motif, demonstrate significant activity in a cricket diuretic assay. Insect kinin analogs containing (2R,4R)-APy, (2S,4R)-APy and (2S,4S)-APy are essentially equipotent on an insect diuretic assay, with EC(50) values of about 10(-7)M, whereas the (2R,4S)-APy analog is at least 10-fold more potent (EC(50) = 7 x 10(-9)M). Conformational studies in aqueous solution indicate that the (2R,4S)-APy analog is considerably more flexible than the other three variants, which may explain its greater potency. The work identifies the optimal stereochemistry for the APy scaffold with which to design biostable, peptidomimetic analogs with the potential to disrupt critical insect kinin-regulated processes in insects.

The insect kinins are potent diuretic peptides that preferentially form a cis-Pro, type VI beta-turn. An insect kinin analog containing (2S,4S)-4-aminopyroglutamate, a novel cis-peptide bond, type VI beta-turn motif, demonstrates significant activity in the physiological range in a cricket diuretic assay. This is the first instance of a 4-aminopyroglutamate analog of a peptide with a preference for a type VI turn that demonstrates significant bioactivity. The results provide further confirmatory evidence for the active conformation of the insect kinins, and a new scaffold with which to design biostable, peptidomimetic analogs capable of disrupting critical insect kinin-regulated processes in insects., (Copyright 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Dystrophin, a protein associated with sarcolemma and cell membranes, is not expressed in sufferers of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), or in the mdx mouse. DMD is a fatal disorder, with a significant proportion of fatalities associated with cardiac failure ( approximately 40% having dilated cardiomyopathy and >90% clinically significant cardiac defects at death). In this study, the metabolic composition of intact dystrophic cardiac tissue was investigated using high-resolution magic-angle spinning (HRMAS) (1)H NMR spectroscopy with both 1- and 2D pulse sequences coupled with pattern recognition (PR). While conventional solvent presaturation spectra indicated increases in CH(2) chain length in lipids, PR analysis of correlation spectroscopy (COSY) spectra demonstrated that this was also accompanied by an increase in concentration of lactate or threonine along with a relative decrease in CH = CHCH(2)CO groups in these lipids. To investigate the physical environment of these lipids, T(2)- and diffusion-weighted (1)H MAS NMR spectra were acquired on whole-tissue samples. The relatively increased lipid signal intensity in dystrophic tissue was due to an increase in molecules with long T(2) and short diffusion rates. The use of a range of pulse programs allowed the direct probing of the biochemical environment in which the lipid infiltration occurred, and by coupling the experiments to PR the significance of lipid infiltration and accumulation was also assessed.

The preferred conformations of the active diuretic insect kinin pentapeptide analogue Phe-Phe-Aib-Trp-Gly-NH2 were studied using nmr spectroscopy and molecular modeling. Structure sets consistent with rotating frame nuclear Overhauser effect spectroscopy distance constraints obtained by restrained simulated annealing in vacuo indicate a predominant population of a type II beta-turn involving the Phe1-Trp4 region. An equilibrium between this type II and a type I beta-turn formed by residues Phe2 and Gly5 was observed in a 5 ns restrained molecular dynamics simulation using the implicit generalized Born solvent accessible surface area (GB/SA) solvation model. When subjected to 500 ps dynamics with explicit water both beta-turn folds were conserved throughout the simulations. The results obtained with implicit and explicit solvation models are compared, and their consistency with the nmr observations is discussed. The behavior of the linear pentapeptide in this study is in agreement with an earlier report on the consensus conformation of the insect kinin active core derived from analysis of cyclic active analogues.

A 55-year-old woman with a history of Stage IA endometrial adenocarcinoma, previously treated with surgery and intracavitary radiation therapy, had an isolated calcaneal metastasis. Normal radiographs led to a delay in the diagnosis of her relapse. An ankle computed tomographic scan finally identified a mass, and the surgical biopsy specimen confirmed the diagnosis. This is the first reported case of an isolated calcaneal metastasis in endometrial adenocarcinoma to the authors' knowledge.