Vet Gazette

As part of the College of Veterinary Medicine’s wellness program, counselor Alex Rowell has been providing students, staff and faculty with weekly email tips, and periodic presentations on staying physically and mentally well. He compiled the following apps; they are great resources for managing stress:

• Breathe2Relax: A portable stress management tool which provides detailed information on the effects of stress on the body, and instructions and practice exercises to help users learn the stress management skill called diaphragmatic breathing.
• Fluid Monkey – Relax as you enjoy interacting with incredibly smooth and responsive pools of liquid. Use all ten fingers to smear paint, jiggle gelatin, or fling brightly-colored balls through puddles of mud.
• iQuarium – Chill out while watching your Parrot Cichlid fish swimming in its tank; feed it, play with it, interact with it.
• Panic Attack Aid – Contains tools for breathing, explanation of physical symptoms, and distraction exercises.
• Relax Melodies – White noise ambience for sleep, meditation & yoga.
• Simply Being Guided Meditation – Voice guided step-by-step instructions for meditation and relaxation.
• Daily Body Scan – A stand-alone, iPod-ready, audio track featuring expert contributor Stephen Cope from Wild Divine, the makers of Relaxing Rhythms.
• Equanimity – Provides mindfulness practice sessions.
• Simply Yoga – Contains 20, 40, or 60 minute yoga routines that step you through each pose. Each pose is demonstrated by a certified personal trainer, simply choose your workout length and follow along in the comfort of your own home

The College of Veterinary Medicine welcomes Sreekanth Puttachary, a new Assistant Professor of microanatomy and embryology in the Department of Biomedical Sciences.

Dr. Puttachary’s research focuses on developing novel drug targets to slow down/prevent the progression of epilepsy. He will also be teaching microanatomy, begining this fall. Dr. Puttachary won two teaching excellence awards when he was at Iowa State University.

Two models recently created on the new 3-D printer.

When Dr. Jennifer Warnock, orthopedic surgeon in the OSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital, has a complex surgery ahead, she often uses 3-D models of her patient’s bones to help plan the procedure.

Thanks to a generous donation from Steve and Rebecca Camden, Dr. Warnock can now get those models from a laboratory down the hall, and they cost $20 instead of $200.

A newly ‘printed’ model of a bone awaits processing in a bath to reveal details. Data from a CT scanner was fed into the printer to create the model.

Dr. Susanne Stieger-Vanegas is OSU’s Camden Endowed Professor, and she recently purchased a Stratasys 3-D printer. She is working with Dr. Warnock to study the best way to use the hospital’s 64-slice, high-speed CT to generate the data needed for optimal models. “I can tweak the details in the model, by taking slices [on the CT] from one-quarter millimeter to two millimeters,” she says, “but there is a point at which it is too fine.”

Dr. Stieger-Vanegas is also looking at creating models that can be sawn into peices by Dr. Warnock.

The OSU Veterinary Hospital has several clinical trials that are currently enrolling dogs. One example:

Canine Fasting and Chemotherapy Study

Canine cancer patients treated with chemotherapy may have gastrointestinal side effects such as poor appetite and vomiting.  Short-term fasting may decrease the risk of such side effects.  We are recruiting dogs that will be administered chemotherapy (vincristine or carboplatin) as part of their cancer treatment.  Research funding supports much of the expense of two chemotherapy treatments including exam fees, complete blood counts and chemotherapy administration fees

Veterinarians with patients who qualify, may call Dr. Katie Curran or Dr. Shay Bracha at 541-737-4812. Other clinical trials may be found online.

The 2017 Davis-Thompson Foundation Descriptive Veterinary Pathology Course will be held at Magruder Hall, June 26 – 30, 2017.

The course includes lectures, active learning exercises, & mock exams on:

• Gross Pathology
• Microscopic Pathology
• Gross-Micro Correlations
• Ultrastructural Pathology
• Immunohistochemistry
• Cytology for anatomic pathologists

Attendees will have an opportunity to meet course lecturers, get individual feedback, and mingle with other trainees from around the world. Register online.

For more information, contact Christiane.Loehr@oregonstate.edu.

Dr. Manoj Pastey, Noah Lawler, Donna Mulrooney, and Andree Hunkapillar.

From the outside, the OSU Veterinary Research Laboratory (VRL) doesn’t look like a high-tech center of advanced disease testing, but behind the drab, cement-block walls, are highly-trained experts and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of state-of-the-art equipment.

There are several teams working in the VRL, which is managed by the Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (OVDL). On the Molecular Diagnostic (MD) team are Section Head Manoj Pastey, Supervisor Donna Mulrooney, and Microbiologists Andree Hunkapiller and Noah Lawler. They use DNA to find the causes of disease in all kinds of critters, from chickens to llamas. “Basically we are looking for specific gene sequences that identify a pathogen – a virus, bacteria or parasite – in a sample,” says Mulrooney. “The sample can be anything from a piece of lung, to fecal samples, to blood,” she says.

Most of the customers for the lab are Oregon veterinarians, many of whom work in the OSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital, but there are also customers from other states. “We have tests that are unique to our lab, so we get samples from across the U.S.,” says Mulrooney. “For instance we have a test for Mycoplasma haemolamae, a blood parasite that can cause severe anemia in alpacas and llamas.” That test was developed right here at the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine by Dr. Susan Tornquist and Dr. Chris Cebra

The molecular diagnostics lab also works with state and federal agencies. They receive weekly samples from Oregon’s state veterinarian for screening of avian influenza. “We test samples from the live bird market in Woodburn,” says Mulrooney. Avian influenza is a serious problem for farmers because it spreads very quickly and is deadly to poultry.

The OVDL is a member of a national surveillance network, under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that works to respond quickly to disease outbreaks.  That means the MD team has to be prepared to take on heavy loads of extra testing on a moment’s notice. “In the event of a multi-state outbreak of something like avian influenza, we have to cancel vacations and work long hours,” says Hunkapiller.

Read the rest of this entry »