HEALTH - What Veterinarians Know That Physicians Don't

In a popular TedMed Talk, Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz discusses how veterinarians and human medical doctors should work together more.

The Cardiologist explores the connection between humans and animals and how physicians and vets treat the same disorders such as arthritis, diabetes, depression, anxiety and compulsions, to name a few.

‘Why hadn’t I thought to check with veterinarians, read veterinary medical journals or attend a veterinary conference,’ she questions. Nor had her colleagues.

Natterson-Horowitz promotes a species-spanning approach to health and how it can improve the medical care of the human animal.

Her call to action is directly in line with the One Health movement.

One Health supporters believe veterinarians, physicians, molecular biologists, ecologists, environmental chemists, and others are better able to respond to existing and emerging concerns when they work together.

Another initiative bolstering the species-spanning approach is Zoobiquity.

Zoobiquity explores how human and non-human animal commonalities can be used to diagnose, treat, and heal patients of all species, and hosts a conference every spring which brings together leading clinicians and scientists in both human and veterinary medicine.

HEALTH - Hamilton Cat Tests Positive for Rabies

Hamilton Public Health Services was notified on August 25, 2016 by Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit that a cat that may have originated in a rural area of Ancaster tested positive for rabies.

They are asking anyone who may have lost, abandoned, fed, or came in contact with a grey adult male cat in the area of Alberton, from south of Highway 403 into Brant County, between August 10 and August 20 to contact them.

• City of Hamilton residents can call 905-546-2489.
• Brant County residents can call 519-753-4937.

It’s possible the cat is Hamilton’s first case of domestic rabies in over 20 years.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is conducting tests to determine if this case is related to the raccoon strain of rabies found in the wild animal population in the Hamilton area.

Results of the tests are expected next week.

After more than a decade without raccoon strain rabies, Ontario has seen cases throughout 2016.

To combat the outbreak, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry is planning a large scale aerial baiting operation in late August early September.

They will be distributing 500,000 more rabies vaccine baits by Twin Otter aircraft.

This is in addition to the 900,000 oral vaccine baits that have been distributed by the ministry in southern Ontario since December 2015 when the first case of raccoon rabies was confirmed.

As of August 23rd, 170 cases of raccoon strain rabies and 2 cases of fox strain rabies have been found in the province.

Raccoon strain rabies by area:

Hamilton 150

Haldimand 10

Niagara 5

Brant 5

In these cases, rabies was found in 118 raccoons and 52 skunks.

Hamilton Public Health is encouraging residents to:

• Always keep a safe distance from wild and unknown animals. Rabies can make animals aggressive or it can make them appear sick, scared, or friendly.
• Avoid contact with live or dead animals including raccoons, skunks, other land animals and bats, and unknown dogs and cats. Do not feed, help, or relocate any wildlife or keep them as pets.
• Keep your pets supervised.
• Vaccinate your pets against rabies, and keep rabies vaccinations current for dogs and cats to protect them, and prevent any spread to people. Visit their website for information on low cost rabies vaccine clinics.
• Report animal bites and scratches to public health by calling 905-546-2489. Wash wounds with soap and water and seek medical attention.
• If you see sick, injured or strange behaving wildlife report it to City of Hamilton Animal Services 905-546-2489.
  
  

INNOVATION - Feeding the Cat Just Got More Interesting

Bringing all the goodness of the great outdoors inside will help ensure domestic cats are getting the best when it comes to meal time.

(NoBowl)

That's the thinking behind the NoBowl creation – an indoor hunting system for cats - by veterinarian, Liz Bales.

The Philadelphia vet hopes mimicking cats' natural feeding habits outdoors will mean less indoor issues for owners to deal with, especially the so-called scarf-and-barf syndrome.

“They need portion control. They need regular exercise. They really should be in charge of their own feeding schedule,” Bales told the New York Times. “All these factors boil down to cats should not be eating from bowls.”

Bales says NoBowl isn't just about trying to eliminate the icky need for owners to contend with cat puke but about the health of felines especially at a time when research shows nearly 60% of cats are overweight or obese.

While most would-be fixes have focused on lower-calorie food or portion control, Bales says the solution isn't about making meal time play time but instead should be a return to the wild ways which kept felines in fine form.

Indoor living, touted by many as the most responsible way to keep a cat and offer it a longer life than it would have if permitted to go outdoors, suppresses cats' natural hunting instincts, Bales explained to the New York Times.

In their natural environment, cats eat about a dozen times a day, dining on delicacies like mice and birds and the NoBowl Feeding System is designed to simulate cats' natural feeding habits.

“When cats are fed from a bowl, they are denied the ability to fulfill (the hunting) instinct,” the NoBowl website states.

“Their bodies are often over nourished while their instincts are starved. A cat's frustrated hunting instincts are commonly redirected into negative behaviours like obesity, vomiting, destructive behaviour, inter-cat aggression and maybe even urinating outside the litter box. While veterinarians have known this for a long time, there has been no safe and effective way to help cats hunt inside of the home.”

Cat owners opting for the system ditch the traditional bowl and instead put small portions of dry food into five plastic containers (wrapped in stretchy, grey fabric and made to look like a mouse,) and hide them for the cat.

So rather than strolling to the big, ol' bowl, the kitty has to work for its dinner.

That puts puss on the hunt for food and when they find it requires them to bat the pouch around in order for food to fall out.

“Some cats just roll it,” Bales says “But with other cats, it’s a full-on rodeo.”

The feeding option is already getting props from professionals.

Dr. Carlo Siracuse with the Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, says the real world doesn't see cats have their meals rolled out on the red carpet and it does see them toss about their prey as part of the meal-time process.

“The behaviour pattern is written in the genes of the animal, which means that this is a behavioural need,” Siracusa told the Times. “Paying attention to not just the amount of food, but to the feeding behaviour is a very new concept for veterinary medicine.”

So impressed with the simple but cutting-edge concept, Siracusa joined the NoBowl advisory board.

While some might find the process of stuffing the containers with food and then hiding them somewhat cumbersome, there seem to be many willing to put in the extra work if it means improving their cat's health - with about 3,500 NoBowl customers, so far.

There have been interactive feeding tools for dogs for a while - Kong Wobbler, Starmark Chew Ball, Buster Food Cube, Pet Safe Busy Buddy to name a few.

And if such novel feeding systems are a way to improve pets' health, that is a welcome advantage given the plight of pets these days.

A 2015 Association for Pet Obesity Prevention survey found 58% of cats and 53% of dogs were overweight – yet 90 % of cat owners and 95% of pooch owners incorrectly identified their pet as being in the normal weight category.

The NoBowl retails for $60.

By Nadia Moharib

Nadia is an animal lover who has adopted everything from birds to hamsters, salamanders, rabbits, fish and felines. She has written about all-things-pets for years and was a long-time editor of a pet magazine in a daily newspaper which featured a Q & A column, Ask Whit, penned by her pooch (ghost written, of course.) The serial dog owner lives in Calgary, Alberta and most days can be found at a dog park picking up after her rescue pooch, Scoots.

HEALTH - Database Connects Researchers, Vets and Pet Owners

An online database is being touted as a new tool to help connect researchers, vets and pet owners better than ever.

Launched in June, the AVMA Animal Health Studies Database is designed to direct vets and pet owners to treatment options and assist researchers in recruiting animals to take part in clinical studies.

The first-of-its-kind, go-to database will be an alternative to the cumbersome search veterinarians typically endure when looking for clinical trials which may be relevant to patients.

“So having one site where it’s easy for veterinarians and for pet owners to go in and see what clinical trials are available is just a huge move forward,” says Dr. Therese “Terry” Fossum, chair of the AVMA working group and surgery professor at Midwestern’s College of Veterinary Medicine in Arizona.

And the database will include the good and the bad, so to speak.

“Part of the idea is to provide information about whether results are negative or positive and therefore, whether an intervention is worth pursuing,” Fossum says.

“Very few people publish negative results on the whole, but sometimes those negative results are as informative as positive ones.”

While the Veterinary Cancer Trials website is a national database for studies done on cats and dogs, the AVMA site will go further and encompass all fields of veterinary medicine and all species of animals, even including studies on wildlife.

The network will also extend beyond the U.S to Canada and the United Kingdom.

It means linking up researchers, study candidates, vets looking for promising studies and/or trials and pets needing treatment options will be that much easier to do.

Dr. Ed Murphey, an assistant director in the AVMA Education and Research Division, said a prime example of how the database could work is where investigators might want to study a drug, surgical technique or treatment for a certain condition in animals and turn to the online resource to collect samples from animals with a certain condition for DNA analysis.

“There are a lot of AVMA members involved in the conduct of clinical studies, and so, having the database helps them enrol animals into their studies,” Murphey says.

“And there’s a direct benefit to practitioners who are looking for all avenues to help some of their owners and patients ... (the database) will be a centralized collection where it will be one-stop shopping for people with animals with certain conditions who may be interested in trying to find out if there are any studies that may either help their animal or may at least help direct the advancement of knowledge for the condition.”

Animal owners, veterinarians, and anyone else can search the database.

The Veterinary Cancer Society transferred its estimated 100 studies from its Veterinary Cancer Trials website into the AVMA database and there is a call-out to solicit studies from vet colleges.

Dr. Kim A. Selting, creator of the Veterinary Cancer Trials website and AVMA working group member, says good-quality trials rely on recruiting good candidates, an endeavour simplified by the database.

“Sometimes it’s hard to find those cases,” she says.

“We know they’re out there. We know that dogs get a particular kind of tumor or cats get a particular kind of tumor. But either the owners aren’t aware of the opportunity to participate in a clinical trial or they have some trepidation or uncertainty about participating in a trial or don’t understand what all is involved in that with regards to money and time.”

​The database is at www.avma.org/findvetstudies.

By Nadia Moharib

Nadia Moharib is an animal lover who has adopted everything from birds to hamsters, salamanders, rabbits, fish and felines. She has written about all-things-pets for years and was a long-time editor of a pet magazine in a daily newspaper which featured a Q & A column, Ask Whit, penned by her pooch (ghost written, of course.) The serial dog owner lives in Calgary, Alberta and most days can be found at a dog park picking up after her rescue pooch, Scoots.

HEALTH - Rodney Habib is on Cancer Fighting Mission

Rodney Habib begins his 2016 TEDx talk by saying “Dogs are awesome.”

In his “#DOGS” shirt, with images of dogs on the screen behind him, he is clearly sincere when he says it.

Habib calls himself “a pet nutrition blogger on a mission: to better the way people feed their pets” but it’s clear that he’s doing more than just that.

He won the 2013 Retailer of the Year Summit, the 2014 Summit Awards Communicator of the Year and Retail & Commercial Services Emerging Leader Scholarship, and was a finalist for the Digital Journalist of 2015.

He has a blog, a twitter stream, an active FaceBook page, a thriving brick-and-mortar pet food store, writes for Dogs Naturally magazine, and now his 2016 TEDx talk is making waves on the internet. 

In November 2014, Habib told Petlynx “my passion still lies in getting the message out to the world. My goal is to personally inspire every pet owner on the planet. I want to change the world, and I will.”

As evidenced in his talk, the change he wants to make is to help pet owners use diet to increase their dogs’ lifespan and reduce the incidence of cancer.  His TEDx talk, and much of his current activism, focuses on improving the diets of pets for this specific purpose, and is the result of years of research following his own dog’s cancer diagnosis.

He states that 1 in 2 dogs will get cancer, and that the Broad Institute has found that while 10% of cancers are caused by genetics, 90% are lifestyle or environmental.

The claim that cancer is so significantly impacted by environment and lifestyle (including diet) is a controversial claim, and contradicts the widely accepted “bad luck hypothesis” of cancer development, but this claim is supported by research.

Habib has a proposal for pet owners, informed by this research and the belief that cancer incidence in dogs can be significantly reduced.

He suggests feeding dogs a diet of unprocessed fresh foods.

Sounds simple, right?

And in many ways, it is.

Habib spoke with both Brian McLaren and Jake Perry, two men who have a track record when it comes to keeping animals alive. McLaren’s dog Maggie died in April of this year at 30 years old, and Perry has held the Guinness World Record for oldest cat alive twice, with two separate cats.

Both men told Habib that they believe their pets’ longevity was due to the fresh unprocessed food they were fed.

This is another claim that may seem controversial but is supported by current and ongoing research. The field of nutrigenomics, which Habib references, is an emerging area of study into how diet and nutrition impacts genes.

Purdue University studied the effect of adding vegetables to a dog’s diet and found a significant reduction in bladder cancer risk, particularly with the addition of green leafy and yellow-orange vegetables.

Habib’s passion and his drive to increase the health and lifespan of companion dogs has pulled him into the spotlight many times over the last few years, and it doesn’t look like he’ll be slowing down anytime soon.

By Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.

HEALTH - One Health Initiative: Uniting Human and Animal Medicine

With outbreaks of diseases such as avian flu, swine flu, and Ebola, there has been increased awareness of the risks associated with zoonotic diseases. (Zoonotic diseases are any diseases that can spread from animals to humans.)

 

Researchers are looking into how these diseases cross species barriers, spread through populations, and are impacted by environmental factors.

New research has made it clear that effective health management requires a holistic and integrated understanding of disease development and spread.

Each of the various disciplines involved – veterinarians, physicians, molecular biologists, ecologists, environmental chemists, and others – are better able to respond to existing and emerging concerns when they collaborate with each other.

The United States Department of Agriculture has taken a “One Health” approach for some time, meaning that they view human, animal, and environmental health as connected. In a recent blog post they state that health issues must “be solved through improved communication, cooperation, and collaboration across disciplines and institutions.”

As a step towards this communication, cooperation, and collaboration, they have recently launched a centralized web portal page to allow everyone, from stakeholders to the public, to access up to date information on programs, policies, and current issues.

Some of the topics that the USDA believes require a One Health approach are antimicrobial resistance, avian influenza, and influenza in swine.

Each specific topic is addressed in detail on the new site, with overviews, resources, and even links to information about research funding options.

The USDA partners with US Fish and Wildlife, US Food and Drug Administration, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, and tribal Nations, as well as working internally with each of its many branches.

The USDA’s One Health portal site is an important step for American integrative health management, and the concept of cross-discipline collaborative health management is gaining traction globally.

The One Health Initiative is a global initiative that also hopes to expand interdisciplinary collaboration for human, animal, and environmental health. Their website has been active since 2008, and although the One Health Initiative is separate from the USDA’s One Health portal, they also work with organizations such as the CDC and the USDA.

Other global initiatives include One Health Sweden, which works to integrate research about zoonotic infections from various disciplines, and the One Health Congress, which first met in February 2011 in Melbourne, Australia and has met every year since.

By Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.

WELFARE - Shelter Health Pro Website Launched

If you work or volunteer in a shelter, or have an interest in animal health and wellness, the new shelter health pro website from the Ontario SPCA may be for you.

The website includes best practices for improving animal health and welfare. It offers shelter management strategies, protocols and resources for infection and disease prevention and control for shelter professionals, staff and volunteers.

As well, the site has up to date information gathered from shelter medicine experts.

Topics include Intake Procedures, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Cleaning and Disinfection, Zoonotic Diseases and Infection Control.

The site is easy to navigate and you can subscribe to receive insider tips and information to help you as a shelter health professional.

Check it out.

HEALTH - Canine Cancer Treatment With "Mind-blowing" Results

Imagine scientists being able to unleash a dog's own immune system to attack cancer.

Then imagine the potentially life-saving treatment, (which would allow cancer-stricken canines to avoid more conventional side-effects of chemotherapy,) being downright affordable.

It's much more than a pipe-dream for Melbourne scientists behind a free clinical trial being conducted Down Under which is already proving to have what Dr. Noam Pik calls “mind-blowing” early results.

(Dr. Noam Pik, photo: Chris Eastman)

Pik, head of the veterinary division at West Melbourne biotechnology research group Biotempus, told the Herald Sun if the trial proves effective, the plan is to offer it as treatment to ailing canines within the next two years and “then continue to humans.”

Essentially, the treatment sees dogs take a pill to thwart cancer's bid to kill.

In the year-long trial being done at 20 vet clinics in Australia, dogs are given a single dose of chemotherapy, that's one tablet, designed to decimate T-Regulatory cells within the pooch's own immune system.

These cells suppress the cancer-fighting mechanism of the immune system's T-Effector cells.

Mere months into the trial, researchers say they have already seen several dogs with early signs of remission.

“If the T-Regulatory cells can be selectively killed, the T-Effector cells can get on with the job of eliminating cancer undisturbed,” Pik told the Herald Sun.

Part of reaching that goal has been accomplished by the team's discovery that a dog's immune system, which moves in cycles, can be mapped.

With that in mind, blood samples are taken every second day allowing researchers to determine when suppressor cells are most vulnerable and then delivering chemotherapy at the optimal juncture.

Not only are there promising results, so far, but the prospect of honing in on a cancer-fighting treatment which is affordable would make any cancer-fighting coups that much more accessible to pet owners trying to get help for their dogs.

Researchers say prohibitively high canine cancer treatment costs, which can run in the tens of thousands, could be dramatically reduced and severe chemotherapy side-effects, such as nausea, would not be associated to the low-dose tablet.

“If this works ... it will save animals from having to go through a lot of nasty chemo,” says Swan Street Veterinary and Wellness Centre’s Dr Kathryn Farquharson.

Pik and his partners, although buoyed by the potential research findings which could lead to a breakthrough in human treatment, are cautiously optimistic.

“The results have been very exciting but we want to remain skeptical. We’re trialling it over the next year — compiling data, publishing in scientific journals,” Pik says.

Dr. Maureen Cooper, a Melbourne veterinary oncologist, says the field of immunotherapy – using a patient's own immune system to combat cancer – has seen much progress in recent years and she she is anxious to see if Biotempus findings add to that wealth of knowledge.

“I believe that in order to improve outcomes in cancer patients, novel treatments and treatment approaches are needed,” Cooper told the Herald Sun.

“We now believe the contribution of the tumour micro-environment is immense and has been previously largely underestimated. Thus, we believe it is important to aim treatment at both the tumour itself and the tumour environment with the aim of achieving more effective and durable cancer treatments.”

Sadly, it seems the disease has taken a stronghold on Carol Veldhoven's eight-year-old dog, Jack.

When she learned a broken leg was in fact symptomatic of aggressive bone cancer, Veldhoven invested more than $10,000 towards vet care but stopped short of having Jack endure amputation or chemotherapy.

It might be too late for Jack, but because the dog is enrolled in the Biotempus clinical cancer trial held in January, he may leave behind quite the legacy – being part of ground-breaking research which will benefit dogs facing a similar plight in future.

“We’re not expecting anything,” Veldhoven told the Herald Sun. “It’s more about helping others down the line.”

By Nadia Moharib

Nadia Moharib is an animal lover who has adopted everything from birds to hamsters, salamanders, rabbits, fish and felines. She has written about all-things-pets for years and was a long-time editor of a pet magazine in a daily newspaper which featured a Q & A column, Ask Whit, penned by her pooch (ghost written, of course.) The serial dog owner lives in Calgary, Alberta and most days can be found at a dog park picking up after her rescue pooch, Scoots.

HEALTH - Early Spay/Neuter of Dogs May Cause Problems

The question of when to spay or neuter dogs is complex.

Spaying or neutering dogs at 6 months is common practice, and is often convenient timing for pet owners. It coincides with completing their first series of vaccines, and allows pet owners to skip the mess and frustration of female dogs going into heat.

Early spay/neuter, sometimes as early as 6 weeks, is common in shelter environments, and prevents further pet overpopulation by sending adopted puppies and kittens home already neutered or spayed.

In addition to the issue of pet overpopulation, another reason for early spay/neuter is the assumption that the procedure can reduce aggression and other undesirable behaviour in dogs. But, especially when it comes to aggression, this isn’t guaranteed.

The behavioural effects of neutering are difficult to study because many studies rely on owner surveys and have trouble accounting for variables such as training and owner behaviour. However, one study in 1997 found that neutering reduced urine marking, mounting, and roaming by a significant amount (90% in 40% of the study dogs, and 50% in the remaining 60% of the study dogs).

But behaviour isn’t the only piece of the puzzle.

There is a growing body of evidence that early spay/neuter (earlier than 6 months) can result in increased joint issues in German Shepherds, Golden Retrievers, and Labrador Retrievers.

These findings are troubling, but they are far from conclusive.

As Tina Wolfe, DVM, MS, DACVS notes in a guest editorial for Advances in Small Animal Medicine and Surgery, “Though some associations were found between spay or neuter and some health conditions, this differed between breeds, and a causal relationship is not clear… In addition to the spay/neuter status and its timing, other factors including diet, lifestyle, environment, preventive care, and genetics should be considered.”

Laura Sanborn’s 2007 overview of the research available at the time shows that the complexity of this issue is nothing new, and these findings contribute to an existing body of research that clearly demonstrates that there are significant benefits and significant risks associated with spaying and neutering at any age, and particularly at early ages.

Sanborn concluded, “The number of health problems associated with neutering may exceed the associated health benefits in most cases.”

This may be true for individual dogs, but group health is also a concern.

Overpopulation is a considerable pet health issue, because, according to the American Humane Association, “millions of cats and dogs are euthanized… because there are more pets than there are responsible homes for them.”

This risk has to be weighed against other health issues such as potential joint problems as a result of early spay/neuter, and highlights again how complex the issue of spaying and neutering really is.

By Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.