Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a big problem with a crappy marketing plan. It’s been termed a ‘silent pandemic’, has huge health and financial impacts and is only going to get worse if we don’t act. But, the average person doesn’t know or doesn’t care (mainly the former). That’s a problem because lack of awareness leads
Updated CLSI Veterinary Susceptibility Testing Guidance: What Veterinarians Need to Know (Spoiler… This One Has Lots of Relevant Changes!)
Diagnostic testing is a cornerstone of veterinary medicine that helps us optimize patient care, but there’s a lot of science behind it that people often forget. We collect a sample, send it off for testing and magically get the results, often without putting a lot of thought into what happens at the lab. Labs (should)
Rabies Recap, US 2021
As per usual, the annual US rabies state-of-the-union has been published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (Ma et al. 2023). It’s the same general information every year, but always a good reminder of the ongoing challenges with rabies here in North America.
Here are some highlights from the animal-related
SARS-CoV-2 Infection in a Healthy Horse
While we’ve learned a lot about the susceptibility of many different animal species to SARS-CoV-2, horses have been a bit of an unknown. We’ve had concerns about potential susceptibility based on the nature of the receptor the virus uses to enter host cells, but study in horses has still been limited. A lot of that
Should We Vaccinate Animals Against SARS-CoV-2?
Concerns about the animal aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to come in waves. Most of the time they are ignored or dismissed, but there are also periodic flurries of attention and (often over-) reaction. Lately, questions about vaccination of animals against SARS-CoV-2 follow have been on the rise.
Should domestic and wild animals be
Update: COVID-19 in Animals Review Part 5: Horses
This one’s as easy to write as the first version… we still have no clue.
Overall, the health risk to horses from SARS-CoV-2 is probably very low. If horses were getting sick, or at least very sick, we would have noticed by now. I’ve not had any indication that we’re seeing a disease impact
COVID-19 in Animals Review Part 5: Horses
What the story with SARS-CoV-2 in horses?
This one’s easy to answer: we have no clue.
There’s been almost no investigation or research regarding this virus in horses. Horses often get left out in situations like this because they’re livestock, but not (typically) food animals, and investigation of livestock tends to focus on food animal
Antimicrobial resistance attributable to animal contact
Various times, I’ve asked audiences “What percentage of antimicrobial resistance in humans do you think it attributable to antimicrobial use in animals?”
- Answers pretty much range from 0-100%.
The actual number is probably on the low end of that range, but we really don’t know. It’s such a complex system that a simple
When antibiotics fail… A tale of two antimicrobial resistance reports
Two reports came out this week, both detailing the scourge of antibiotic resistance.
- In Canada, the Canadian Council of Academies released “When antibiotics fail: the expert panel on the potential socio-economic impacts of antimicrobial resistance in Canada.”
- Not to be outdone, the CDC released Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2019
Strangles and horse shows: Cancellation vs infection control
A number of Ontario fairs have cancelled horse shows because of concerns about strangles. Strangles is a nasty and highly contagious disease of horses caused by the bacterium Streptococcus equi, which is currently circulating in horses in Ontario (as in most places where horses are present). While most horses recover uneventfully from the