Objectives To determine if proteinuria is more common in dogs with lymphoma when compared with healthy dogs and to assess the severity and frequency of proteinuria in dogs with lymphoma. Methods Determination of urine protein:creatinine ratio in 32 dogs with lymphoma compared with 30 healthy dogs. Results Canine patients with lymphoma are more likely to be proteinuric compared with healthy dogs. Proteinuria is common in dogs with lymphoma, although in most cases it is not severe. The presence of proteinuria is not linked with the stage or substage of lymphoma. Clinical Significance Mild proteinuria is a common finding in dogs with lymphoma. The clinical impact of the proteinuria is probably low.
Staphylococcus (S.) aureus is a coagulase-positive pathogen of interest for human health and food safety in particular. It can survive in a wide environmental temperature range (7–48 °C, optimum 37 °C). Its enterotoxins are thermostable, which increases the risk of potential contamination in a variety of food products. Here we investigated the influence of seasonality and food type on bacterial count and presence of S. aureus enterotoxins. To do this, we analyzed 3604 food samples collected over a 5-year period (2016–2020). Ordinal logistic regression showed an influence of both seasonality and food type on the bacterial count. Regarding bacterial counts, winter was found to be the season with the highest risk, while with regards to enterotoxin production, the highest risk was found in autumn, specifically in October. The risk of contamination with S. aureus was greatest for dairy products. Our findings may inform food epidemiologists about foodborne illness prevention and risk to human health.
In May 2016, two separate clusters of febrile gastroenteritis caused by Listeria monocytogenes were detected by the local health authority in Piedmont, in northern Italy. We carried out epidemiological, microbiological and traceback investigations to identify the source. The people affected were students and staff members from two different schools in two different villages located in the Province of Turin; five of them were hospitalised. The epidemiological investigation identified a cooked beef ham served at the school canteens as the source of the food-borne outbreak. L. monocytogenes was isolated from the food, the stools of the hospitalised pupils and the environment of the factory producing the cooked beef ham. All isolates except one were serotype 1/2a, shared an indistinguishable PFGE pattern and were 100% identical by whole genome sequencing (WGS). By combining a classical epidemiological approach with both molecular subtyping and WGS techniques, we were able to identify and confirm a Listeria gastroenteritis outbreak associated with consumption of sliced cold beef ham.
Firstly developed to react to bioterrorism threats and to detect emerging diseases (e.g., respiratory illnesses like influenza and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), syndromic surveillance (SyS) soon showed its potential for epidemiological surveillance in both human and veterinary medicine. Since mortality is a basic indicator of health, understanding its epidemiology is fundamental for effective public health practice: monitoring of excess cattle mortality has proven useful for detecting disease epidemics, like Bluetongue serotype 8 in France, and to assess the impact of extreme environmental conditions such as heat waves. Here we describe how we set up and evaluated a veterinary SyS system in Piedmont, northwest Italy, to capture outbreaks of anomalous mortality in dairy cattle by using Italian National Cattle Registry data. Situational awareness was achieved through descriptive and summary statistics and longitudinal modelling (Poisson regression, Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average models). Early event detection was implemented by statistical process control methods, including Shewhart and exponentially weighted moving average charts. SyS performance was assessed on real data and by simulating anomalous peaks in mortality (outbreaks) of different shape, magnitude, and duration. The SyS signalled 13 outbreaks in a 4-year period (2011-2014), most of which attributable to extreme weather conditions. Given the occurrence of climate changes these conditions are expected to recur frequently, and to play a role in adversely affecting dairy productions. Detection of outbreak simulations showed high specificity, whereas sensitivity varied according to the shape, magnitude, and duration of outbreaks. Our EED may serve as a model for setting up veterinary SyS in other European Union countries that share similar mandatory data collection systems. Moreover, it can be a viable approach toward implementing a common European strategy to analyse cattle mortality data.
Salmonella is the second most frequent bacterial pathogen involved in human gastrointestinal outbreaks in the European Union; it can enter the food-production chain from animal or environmental sources or from asymptomatic food operators. European food legislation has established microbiological criteria to ensure consumer protection.
