FDA announces dog food brands that could cause heart failure

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has released a list of pet food brands that they say could cause congestive heart failure in dogs.
In July 2018, the FDA first alerted the public about an investigation that found a possible link between dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) and dogs eating certain types of pet food.
Canine DCM is described as the disease of a dog’s heart muscle, can often result in congestive heart failure.
Breeds that are typically affected are large and giant breed dogs, according to the FDA. However, many of the 524 cases of DCM reported to the FDA have included smaller breeds of dogs, suggesting a lack of a genetic connection.
In many cases, food linked to DCM was in dry form and contained ingredients including peas, lentils, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. Many others were grain-free.
The following dog food brands were named the most in reported DCM cases, according to the FDA:

• Acana: 67
• Zignature: 64
• Taste of the Wild: 53
• 4Health: 32
• Earthborn Holistic: 32
• Blue Buffalo: 31
• Nature’s Domain: 29
• Fromm: 24
• Merrick: 16
• California Natural: 15
• Natural Balance: 15
• Orijen: 12
• Nature’s Variety: 11
• NutriSource: 10
• Nutro: 10
• Rachael Ray Nutrish: 10

The FDA is urging pet owners to work with their veterinarians, who have the ability to consult a board-certified veterinary nutritionist, to obtain the most appropriate dietary advice.

Clay as a feed supplement in dairy cattle has multiple benefits

Dairy producers frequently add clay as a feed supplement to reduce the symptoms of aflatoxin and subacute ruminal acidosis (SARA) in lactating cows. In a new study from the University of Illinois, researchers show that clay can also improve the degradability of feedstuffs.
"Farmers are giving this clay, but they want to know if the corn silage or hay the cow is eating is affected. We found that yes, the clay is changing the way the cow degrades feedstuffs," says Phil Cardoso, associate professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at Illinois and co-author of the Animal Feed Science and Technology study.
Cardoso and his team tested the degradability of six feedstuffs - dried alfalfa hay, grass hay, wet brewer's grains, ground corn, corn silage, and soybean meal - along with no added clay, 1%, or 2% of dietary dry matter.
The researchers placed the feedstuffs into mesh bags and inserted them directly into the rumen through a cannula or fistula, a surgically installed portal that allows the contents of the rumen to be sampled for research purposes. The bags were then drawn out at multiple time intervals (two hours to four days) and analyzed.
"There were some differences in how the feedstuffs degraded over time. When clay was added to grass hay at 2% of dietary dry matter, the digestibility and usage of the fat in that material was maximized. It's better. And we didn't see a decline in degradability of the other feedstuffs, either," Cardoso says. "Overall, to maximize the benefits of clay, we'd recommend adding it at 1 to 2% of dietary dry matter."
Cardoso's previous research has shown that multiple types of clay are effective in handling aflatoxin, a toxic substance produced by fungal contaminants on feed. When the toxin is bound up by the clay, it is simply excreted from the cow's body, rather than being absorbed in the bloodstream. And a 2018 study by Cardoso's team showed that aluminosilicate clay improved cows' immune function and reduced liver inflammation during an aflatoxin challenge.
Cardoso says, "From all of our work on this, I can tell producers whenever they are facing the risk of aflatoxin, they should consider using clay without worrying about it binding other minerals or hindering forage digestibility. Rather, we've shown digestibility could increase. Of course, it's important to ensure the specific clay product has been tested."
Clay's benefits don't stop there. Because the material attracts and binds positively charged ions, clay can make the rumen less acidic. This is important particularly given the popularity of increasing grain concentrates in TMR feed, which can lead to SARA. In a 2016 study from Cardoso's group, cows challenged with excess wheat in a TMR diet produced more and higher-quality milk and had higher rumen pH when fed bentonite clay at 2% of dietary dry matter.

"Basically, clay has all these benefits: It reduces aflatoxin toxicity, works as a pH buffer, and also improves the degradability of some feedstuffs," Cardoso says. "Producers should know this."

Eastern equine encephalitis virus poses emergent threat, say NIH officials

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Under a magnification of 83,900X, this digitally colorized transmission electron microscopic (TEM) image depicts a salivary gland tissue section that had been extracted from a mosquito, which was infected by the eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) virus. The viral particles have been colorized red.CDC/ Fred Murphy; Sylvia Whitfield

What

Although eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), a mosquito-borne illness, has existed for centuries, 2019 has been a particularly deadly year for the disease in the United States. As of November 12, 36 confirmed cases of EEE had been reported by eight states; 13 of these cases were fatal. In a new commentary in The New England Journal of Medicine, officials from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, describe the eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) that causes EEE, current research efforts to address EEE, and the need for a national strategy to address the growing threat of EEEV and other emerging and re-emerging viruses spread by mosquitoes and ticks (known as arboviruses).
There were 12 documented U.S.-based EEE epidemics between 1831 and 1959. The virus is spread between Culiseta melanura mosquitoes and various tree-perching birds found in forested wetlands. Occasionally, other mosquito species transmit the virus to people and other mammals. In people, EEEV takes roughly 3 to 10 days to cause symptoms. The virus initially causes fever, malaise, intense headache, muscle aches, nausea and vomiting; specific diagnostic testing may not reveal anything as EEEV is difficult to isolate from clinical samples, and testing for EEEV antibodies may be negative. Neurologic signs of EEE, which may appear within 5 days of infection, initially are nonspecific but rapidly progress. Most people (96%) infected with EEEV do not develop symptoms; however, of those who do, one-third or more die, and the others frequently suffer permanent and severe neurologic damage.
Although point-of-care diagnostics for EEE and many other mosquito-borne causes of encephalitis are not available, currently they would be of limited value in the absence of effective treatment, the authors write. So far, no antiviral drug has proven safe and effective against EEE, but many compounds are being assessed. Monoclonal antibodies have been found effective in an experimental animal model but only when given prior to infection. Patients with EEE are currently treated with supportive care, which often includes intensive care in a hospital and ventilator assistance. Patients with EEE are not infectious, and social support and counseling for both the patient and the family are vitally important given the seriousness of the disease, the authors write.
Several EEE vaccine candidates are in development but may have trouble reaching advanced development and licensure, according to the authors. EEE outbreaks are rare, brief and focal, and occur sporadically in unpredictable locations, making it difficult to identify an appropriate target population for vaccination. Efforts to develop mosquito-saliva vaccines that would be effective against multiple mosquito diseases, including EEE, are in early stages.
In the absence of effective EEE vaccines and treatments, state and local health departments can provide an early warning of imminent human infections by surveilling horses, birds and mosquitoes, but these efforts are threatened by insufficient funding, according to the authors. In recent years, the Americas have seen a growing number of emerging and re-emerging arboviruses, such as dengue, West Nile, chikungunya, Zika and Powassan. Although outbreaks of EEE disease thus far have been infrequent and focal, the spike in cases in 2019 and the looming presence of other, potentially deadly arboviruses in the United States and globally demand a national defense strategy for arboviruses and other vector-borne diseases, the authors write. Although the best way to address these viruses is not entirely clear, to “ignore them completely and do nothing would be irresponsible,” say the authors.

Humans' ability to read dogs' facial expressions is learned, not innate

Dogs were the first domesticated animal, with humans and dogs sharing more than 40,000 years of social interactions and life together. According to the co-domestication hypothesis, this process allowed humans and dogs to evolve special emotional signals and cognitive skills that favor mutual understanding. We know, for example, that over the millennia, dogs have evolved the ability to understand human words, iconic signs, and other gestures, and research has shown that dogs can even use tone of voice and facial expressions to recognize human emotions. Beyond personal testimony from dog lovers, however, little attention has been paid to how well humans can understand their canine counterparts.
In the current study, led by Federica Amici of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Juliane Bräuer of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the researchers set out to understand how well humans can understand the emotional displays of dogs, and where that understanding comes from.
How well do we understand our species' best friend? In order to test how well humans can understand the emotions behind dog facial expressions, researchers collected photographs of dogs, chimpanzees, and humans displaying either happy, sad, angry, neutral, or fearful emotions as substantiated by the photographers. They then recruited 89 adult participants and 77 child participants and categorized them according to their age, the dog-positivity of their cultural context, and the participants' personal history of dog ownership.
Each participant was presented with photographs of dogs, chimps, and humans, and asked to rate how much the individual in the picture displayed happiness, sadness, anger, or fear. Adults were also asked to determine the context in which the picture had been taken (e.g., playing with a trusted conspecific partner; directly before attacking a conspecific). The results of the study showed that, while some dog emotions can be recognized from early on, the ability to reliably recognize dog emotions is mainly acquired through age and experience. In adults, the probability of recognizing dog emotions was higher for participants who grew up in a cultural context with a positive attitude towards dogs, regardless of whether they owned a dog themselves.
Without a dog-positive context, we could be barking up the wrong tree A dog-postive cultural background, one in which dogs are closely integrated into human life and considered highly important, may result in a higher level of passive exposure and increased inclination and interest in dogs, making humans better at recognizing dogs' emotions even without a history of personal dog ownership. "These results are noteworthy," says Amici, "because they suggest that it is not necessarily direct experience with dogs that affects humans' ability to recognize their emotions, but rather the cultural milieu in which humans develop."
The researchers also found that regardless of age or experience with dogs, all participants were able to identify anger and happiness reliably. While these results may suggest an innate ability favored by the co-domestication hypothesis, it is also possible that humans learn to recognize these emotions quickly, even with limited exposure. Other than anger and happiness, the children in the study were not good at identifying dog emotions. They recognized anger and happiness more reliably in dogs than in chimps, but otherwise identified dog emotions as poorly as they did chimpanzee emotions, suggesting that the ability to understand how dogs are feeling is not innate.
"We think it would be valuable to conduct future studies that seek to determine exactly which cultural aspects affect one's ability to read dog emotions, and to include real-life stimuli and body expressions in addition to instructed stimuli and facial expressions," states Bräuer. "In this way, we could develop a better understanding of inter-cultural variation in emotion recognition. Hopefully this information could be used to reduce the occurrence of negative incidents between humans and dogs that are caused by humans' inability to read dog signals."

AI could help diagnose dogs suffering from chronic pain and Chiari-like malformation

University of Surrey

CKCS are predisposed to CM - a disease which causes deformity of the skull, the neck (cranial cervical vertebrae) and, in some extreme cases, lead to spinal cord damage called syringomyelia (SM). While SM is straightforward to diagnose, pain associated with CM is challenging to confirm and why this research is innovative.
In a paper published by the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine, researchers from Surrey's Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP) and School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) detail how they used a completely automated, image mapping method to discover patterns in MRI data that could help vets identify dogs that suffer from CM associated pain. The research helped identify features that characterise the differences in the MRI images of dogs with clinical signs of pain associated with CM and those with syringomyelia from healthy dogs. The AI identified the floor of the third ventricle and its close neural tissue, and the region in the sphenoid bone as biomarkers for pain associated with CM and the presphenoid bone and the region between the soft palate and the tongue for SM.
Dr Michaela Spiteri, lead author of the study from CVSSP, said: "The success of our technique suggests machine learning can be developed as a diagnostic tool to help treat Cavalier King Charles Spaniel's that are suffering from this enigmatic and terrible disease. We believe that AI can be a useful tool for veterinarians caring for our four-legged family members."
Identification of these biomarkers inspired a further study, also published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine, which found that dogs with pain associated with CM had more brachycephalic features (having a relatively broad, short skull) with reduction of nasal tissue and a well-defined stop.
SVM student, Eleonore Dumas, whose 3rd year project formed part of the study data, said: "Being able to contribute to the development of diagnostic tools that allow for earlier diagnosis of patients suffering from this painful condition has been both challenging and incredibly rewarding."
Dr Penny Knowler, lead author of the study from SVM, said: "This study suggests that the whole skull, rather than just the hindbrain, should be analysed in diagnostic tests. It also impacts on how we should interpret MRI from affected dogs and the choices we make when we breed predisposed dogs and develop breeding recommendations."
Adrian Hilton, Distinguished Professor from the University of Surrey and Director of CVSSP, said: "This project demonstrates the potential for AI using machine learning to provide new diagnostic tools for animal health. Collaboration between experts in CVSSP and Surrey's School of Veterinary Medicine is pioneering new approaches to improve animal health and welfare."

A calmer horse is just a sniff away

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How many ways can you think of to stress out a horse? Trailering, bathing, clipping, vet visits, hoof trims, bridling, saddling -- the possibilities are endless. Unfortunately, calming options are not. Thanks to research conducted at the University of Arizona, horsemen and horsewomen have a new tool to help manage equine stress, and it's as simple as a sniff. A sniff of lavender, that is.

Research recently published in the Journal of Equine Veterinary Science found significant signs of stress reduction in horses that inhaled lavender from a diffuser. The study was conducted by Isabelle Chea, a then-undergraduate honors student at the UA, and Ann Baldwin, UA professor of physiology and psychology.
"Horses can be under a lot of stress, so I was interested in seeing if aromatherapy could help in reducing stress," said Chea, who had never been around horses before taking Baldwin's course, Physiology of Mind Body Interactions, at the UA in Tucson, Arizona.
During the class, Baldwin uses horses to teach students about heart rate and heart rate variability, which is a measure of the variation in time between each heartbeat. Both are indicators of the level of stress a person or animal is experiencing, though heart rate variability is a much more sensitive measurement.
Heart rate was the focus of a limited amount of prior research on the use of aromatherapy to calm horses in the presence of a stressor, such as trailering. In one study, horses were startled by an air horn and then provided with humidified lavender air. The horses' heart rates increased in response to the air horn but returned to normal more quickly in those that inhaled lavender.
None of the studies looked at a horse's response to aromatherapy in the absence of an imposed stressor, though, and none measured heart rate variability.
"We wanted to test regular horses that aren't stressed out by external forces," said Baldwin, who rides dressage on her 18-year-old quarter horse, Major. "Some horses and some breeds, it's just in their nature that they are more stressed. So, we wanted to use horses that were not being scared deliberately to see what effect, if any, the aromatherapy had on them."
Baldwin enlisted the help of other owners at her boarding stable to put together a group of nine dressage horses of varying breeds and ages. Each horse was led to a small paddock and held by a volunteer while a diffuser containing lavender essential oil was held near the horse's nose. A monitor tracked heart rates and heart rate variability for 21 minutes total -- seven minutes before the introduction of the diffuser, seven minutes with the diffuser in close proximity, and seven minutes after it was removed.
"The heart rate didn't change; what changed is what's called the parasympathetic component of heart rate variability," Baldwin explained. "One of the parameters of heart rate variability is RMSSD, and that represents parasympathetic input, which is the relaxation part of the autonomic nervous system. If RMSSD goes up, that indicates the horse is relaxed. We found that when the horses were sniffing the lavender, RMSSD significantly increased compared to baseline."
The data were supported by the horses' observed behavior, which often included relaxation signals such as neck lowering and licking and chewing while the lavender was being inhaled.
The experiment was repeated with water vapor and chamomile, neither of which produced a similar calming effect or increase in RMSSD.
"We did get a calming effect with the lavender, but when we measured afterward, we no longer had the effect," Baldwin said. "So, it's just during the sniffing of the lavender that we see this calming effect."
The research has direct implications for horsemen and horsewomen who may be looking for new or natural ways to calm an anxious or nervous horse. Traditional tranquilizers often have long-lasting effects, while lavender can be used precisely and exactly when needed.
"Some horses don't like to be shod. So, when the farrier comes and starts banging around with their hooves, it would be good for that," Baldwin said, giving a practical example of how lavender aromatherapy could be used in the barn. "You don't need a diffuser, really. Just put a few drops of lavender essential oil on your hand and let your horse sniff."
Baldwin says future research projects could examine the effectiveness of aromatherapy for horses using other scents or doses. When it comes to lavender, though, the research is clear. A sniff is all it takes to calm an anxious equine.

Horses blink less, twitch eyelids more when stressed

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How can you tell when a horse is feeling stressed? It's all in the eyes and the way their eyelids twitch, University of Guelph researchers have discovered.

A horse will blink less and twitch its eyelids more when it's under mild stress, the research team found -- a new finding that could offer handlers a simple, easy-to-spot sign their animal is becoming agitated.
The study, published in the journal Animals, is thought to be the first to reveal the significance of eyelid twitches as an indicator of stress, says Prof. Katrina Merkies, the study's lead author.
"With humans, we already know our blinking changes when we are under pressure. Some studies have shown we blink more when agitated while others found we blink less. We wanted to see if horses blink rates change too," said Merkies, a professor in the Department of Animal Biosciences at the Ontario Agricultural College.
Although many horse handlers can tell when their animals are agitated, it can sometimes be hard to get a good read on a horse's mood -- particularly if the animal has been well trained.
"When we train horses, we specifically teach them to suppress their stress responses because we don't want horses to react when they are startled or nervous. But even if they've learned to suppress their reaction, it doesn't actually decrease the stress they feel," she said.
While stress can be measured through heart rate monitors or blood cortisol levels, Merkies and her team wanted a non-invasive measurement, so they decided to test whether a horse's eyes could offer clues.
They recruited 33 horses of various breeds from three riding lesson facilities in eastern Ontario and exposed them to three mildly stressful scenarios.
In the first, a ball was thrown in front of the horse in an attempt to startle the animal. In the next, the horse was visually separated from its herd for a few minutes. Finally, the horse's food was withheld for three minutes at feed time while its herd mates were allowed to begin eating.
The researchers filmed the horses, watching for changes in eye and ear movement, head tilt and general restlessness.
They found that withholding the feed for a few minutes was the most stressful for the horse as indicated by its increased heart rate, restlessness and head movement. Conversely, separation and the startle test evoked little response.
Researchers attempted to startle the horses by throwing a ball in front of them.
"It's important to remember these were riding school horses, so they were used to being startled and being separated. But the withholding of food was new, so that's likely why they became stressed," she said.
When researchers reviewed videos of the horses' eyes during feed withholding, they noticed the horses blinked less but twitched their upper eyelids more.
On average, the horses' full blink rate decreased to an average of five blinks per minute during the stress compared to the eight to nine times per minute when relaxed. During the feed restriction, when the horses felt the most stress, their eyelid twitches increased from an average of two twitches per minute to six twitches per minute. There was no increase in eyelid twitches with the other stress tests.
Merkies said she hopes her team's finding will help horse handlers looking for simple ways to gauge their animals' moods.
"There's no one measure that is going to tell us everything, but this is another tool we can add to the toolbox that we can use together to understand our animals better," she said.

Some breeds of dogs have unusual coat colors and other traits

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If you have a purebred dog, it's likely that he or she looks fairly similar to other dogs of the same breed, especially when it comes to the color of their coats.

But what happens if a purebred puppy doesn't look exactly like its siblings when it's born? Chances are, it might not be a flaw -- but rather a hidden gene variant that decided to show itself.
New research from Purdue University's College of Veterinary Medicine shows that some breeds of dogs have hidden coat colors -- and in some cases, other traits -- that have been lurking all along.
Led by Kari Ekenstedt, DVM, Ph.D., assistant professor of anatomy and genetics, and Dayna Dreger, Ph.D., the lead scientist in Ekenstedt's canine genetics research laboratory, the team looked at a dozen different genes in 212 dog breeds. Purdue researchers, together with industry partners at Wisdom Health, analyzed data that had been initially collected by WISDOM PANEL™ for the development of canine DNA tests. The work was published Oct. 28 in PLOS ONE.
"These are purebred dogs with traits that their breed clubs say they're not supposed to have," said Ekenstedt, whose research program focuses on canine genetics. "The message of this paper is, 'Hey, these gene variants exist in your breed, and if a few dogs are born with these traits, it's not caused by accidental breeding and it's not a mutt; it's a purebred showing this known genetic potential.'"
Along with analyzing the data, researchers used standard breed descriptions from major American and international dog breed registries to determine coat colors and tail lengths that were accepted within each breed.
"There was a lot of information we didn't expect," Dreger said. "When it comes to different dog breeds, their standards are mostly based on preference and aesthetics. We make assumptions for certain breeds based on what we expect their coat colors to be."
Ekenstedt says coat color genes have a significant amount of epistasis between them, meaning that what happens at one gene can mask what's happening at another gene. Because of epistasis, it's rare to see those masked genes actually expressed in a dog's coat color.
One example of a "fault" allele -- a gene variant that would cause a trait that is not allowed in a breed standard -- is an allele that causes the brown color, which affects both hair pigment and skin pigment. The color is allowed in breeds like the Labrador Retriever where it causes the chocolate color. However, researchers observed that in breeds where brown is not allowed, such as the Rottweiler and the German Shepherd Dog, brown alleles exist at low frequencies.
Another example of a fault allele is in the Weimaraner, which exists in both longhaired and shorthaired varieties. At least one dog breed organization does not allow longhaired Weimaraners while several others do allow them. Of the Weimaraners sampled in this data, the longhaired allele is present at a 4% frequency.
The same goes for other traits, too, Dreger said. For example, there are around 18 recognized breeds of dogs that have the genetic potential to be born without a tail -- such as the popular Australian Shepherd. But the data shows that up to 48 of the breeds analyzed possess the tailless gene variant, usually at a very low frequency; one of those breeds is the Dachshund.
"A breeder would certainly be surprised to see a Dachshund born without a tail," Dreger said. "The chances are low, but our research shows that the potential is there."
Both Dreger and Ekenstedt hope the research prompts some discussions within the dog community.
"I want this to start science-based conversations," Dreger said. "We're not here to make decisions on what a breed should or shouldn't look like or what a breed club should do. We're here to say these are the facts, and these are the gene variants that naturally exist in these breeds."
They also hope it changes some perspectives when it comes to what is to be expected with certain breeds of dogs.
"There's an assumption that the standards for these different breeds of dogs are set in stone," Dreger said. "People will often make assumptions that if it doesn't match this, it's not purebred. This data shows that there is a lot of variation in some of these breeds, and the standards are not as concrete as we expect them to be."