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Piera Anna Martino presents Poster 34 during the poster sessions in the Aula.
Session theme 4: Assessing health status of groups of animals in relation to welfare
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Poster 34
AN HEALTH MONITORING PROGRAMME IN A GROUP OF DOGS
P.A. Martino 1 , F. Luzi 2
1 Department of Veterinary Pathology, Hygiene and Public Health, Milano, Italy
2 Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Milano, Italy
The health of animals is always at risk from a variety of infections. Diseases in animals used for
research, whether clinically manifest or subclinical, produce effects that change the outcome of the
experiments. Depending on the specific infection, various biological parameters may be affected
such as welfare, behaviour, growth rate, etc.. All the infections, also in healthy carrier animals, are
likely to increase biological variability.
For these reasons, an animal health monitoring programme is important because it can detect an
healthy carrier of microorganisms, also decreasing the risk of pathogenic and/or zoonotic infection
and adding to the reliability and reproducibility of research data.
The aim of this work is to evaluate the healthy status of a group of dogs used for behavioural
studies by means of a monitoring plan.
Pharyngeal and rectal swabs were collected from 10 Beagle dogs, free of pathogenic bacteria
according to FELASA guidelines, randomly selected, every three months. The dogs were bred for
using in behavioural survey in a research facility in Italy. The speciments were streaked on selective
media for identifying the pathogenic bacteria we have defined to monitor (Bordetella
bronchiseptica for pharyngeal swabs; Salmonella spp., Shigella spp., Yersinia spp. and
Campylobacter spp. for rectal swabs). The samples were incubated at 37 °C and at 42 °C (for
Campylobacter isolation) for 24-48 hours under different atmosphere. The results, recorded as
positive or negative, were reported in the health monitoring report.
All the swabs result positive for the normal bacterial flora and always negative for the pathogenic
strains we search in our health monitoring protocol. These negative results are successful and are
very important because these dogs, free of pathogenic bacteria at the beginning of the research,
must persist negative during the behavioural trials. So, the health monitoring programme allows us
to control this “healthy” status.
Contact information: Piera Anna Martino or email piera.martino@unimi.it
Complete address: Dipartimento di Scienze Animali, Sezione di Zootecnica, Veterinaria Università
degli Studi di Milano via G. Celoria, 10, 20133 Milano, Italia
Species: Dog