Vet Gazette

There are 10 million commercial laying hens, and approximately 100,000 backyard chicken owners, in the state of California. The California Department of Food and Agriculture is charged with protecting all those chickens and one of their biggest challenges comes from Virulent Newcastle Virus, a foreign animal disease with no cure and close to a 100% death rate in unvaccinated flocks.

During the first major outbreak of the virus in 2002, nearly 2 million birds were destroyed to stop the spread of the highly contagious disease. Last summer, Newcastle Virus returned to California, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) asked the Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (OVDL) to help.

When a large-scale animal-disease outbreak occurs, the USDA relies on laboratories managed by state governments and universities to collaborate with them on disease surveillance and testing. In July 2018, the OVDL responded to a request for help with Newcastle Virus by loaning Medical Laboratory Technician Janna Thorp to the California Health and Food Safety Lab (CAHFS) where overwhelmed staff had been processing hundreds of test samples pouring into the lab every day.

Commercial poultry growers use kits to regularly test their flock for Newcastle Virus, and send the samples to CAHFS. When a serious outbreak occurs, a task force sends teams out with warrants to test backyard chickens too. “Last July, they established that the outbreak started in backyard flocks,” says Thorp. “That is due to lack of knowledge. Commercial managers carefully follow antiseptic practices, but backyard growers often don’t know how.”

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Feline Injection Site Sarcoma (FISS) is an uncommon, but aggressive skin tumor that can develop at the location of a vaccination in cats. Currently, the most effective treatment is radical surgery followed by radiotherapy.

Researchers at the Carson College of Veterinary Medicine recently published a study in BioMed Central that may help develop other treatments for FISS.

A team of researchers that included Drs. Stephen Ramsey and Christiane Löhr, demonstrated that FISS is, at the molecular level, highly similar to soft-tissue tumors in dogs and humans, and therefore may respond well to treatments used for those diseases. The team also identified eleven drugs as potential new therapies, and validated in the laboratory that one drug (GSK-105615) does inhibit growth of FISS-derived cancer cells.

This was the first ever study of the transcriptome (all the messenger RNA molecules in a specific gene) of FISS, and the first cross-species comparison of FISS with other cancers.

“This work brought together contributions of tissue from OSU, Colorado State University and the Children’s Cancer Therapy Development Institute; bioinformatics expertise from OSU; and cancer expertise from all three institutions,” says Ramsey.

Jon and Carolyn Kreitz created a scholarship inspired by their family veterinarian, Dr. Steven Haley (Class of 2001)

The Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine (CCVM) provides a top-notch education to the best and the brightest students, and while veterinary college is a rewarding journey, it is a difficult and expensive one. Scholarships provide critical financial relief, but equally important, a scholarship tells a student:  Keep working hard, someone believes in you.

Jon and Carolyn Kreitz recently made that vote of confidence in veterinary students by endowing the Grace L. Kreitz Scholarship in honor of Jon Kreitz mother, who was a lifelong animal lover. The endowment will provide $8,000 to one student every year.

The Kreitz’s were inspired to make this gift by the excellent care their pets have received from OSU alum Dr. Steven Haley (Class of 2001). “We hope our scholarship will help the next generation of veterinary professionals so other families can experience first-hand the professionalism, expertise, and caring Dr. Haley has provided our family,” says Jon Kreitz.

Last month, the Kreitz’s braved a construction zone to visit Magruder Hall and meet with Dean Tornquist to learn about her vision for the future of CCVM. They were given a tour of the expanding facilities by hospital director Dr. Helio deMorais. “Carlson College is in good hands with these two professionals,” says Kreitz.

Carolyn Kreitz is a graduate of Lewis & Clark College and Jon Kreitz a graduate of the University of Oregon, where he was assisted by an academic scholarship.

“We feel it is important to help others gain the opportunity for higher education. With the high cost of education, in a small way we hope we can assist future generations of veterinary students.”

Visit the CCVM scholarship web page to read testimonials from students on what their scholarship meant to them.

The teaching herd welcomed a new member last month: Peaches, a seven-year old llama. To say the camelid herd welcomed her is a bit of an overstatement: They’re not too keen on sharing the apple treats and one of the males, Mon Amore, bullies her. But Peaches can take care of herself and has quickly become the favorite ‘petting’ llama in the college.

“She has a great personality,” says farm manager Kasey Pedder.

“She is the only llama in the herd who will let you pet her,” says Beth Chamblin, Assistant to the Dean. Chamblin occasionally takes the llama herd apples. “Ella hogs all the apples and Mon Amore blocks Peaches when she tries to get some, but she outsmarts him by pretending she’s not interested until he turns away, then she makes a run for it.”

The camelid herd now has 8 llamas and 19 alpacas. Oregon State University is known around the world as a leader in camelid medicine. Many of the standard protocols for treating llamas and alpacas were developed at OSU, for example, the first blood reference ranges, and the first guide for safe and effective vitamin supplementation. Today, OSU publishes twice as much scientific research on camelid medicine as any other university.

Every summer, veterinary students come from all over the U.S. and Canada to take a two-week camelid medicine elective. They get lots of hands-on experience, and this summer a lucky group of students will get to work with Peaches.

Practicing veterinarians and veterinary technicians are invited to attend a free continuing education course at the OSU Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine in April: Beyond the Numbers – Cytologic Evaluation of Blood Smears and use of Flow Cytometry Data – Helpful or Painful? 

Course Description: Recent advances in the field of bench top/point-of-care hematology analyzers have greatly improved both acquisition and analysis of peripheral blood in animals.  However, limitations still exist in the ability of automated analyzers to appropriately identify many cell types and for clinicians to understand and apply assay data. Furthermore, no analytic analyzer is capable of detecting and identifying hemoparasites, nucleated erythrocytes or morphologic changes.  Therefore, this review will revisit the importance of visual examination of well-prepared blood smears in addition to the complete blood count (CBC). Additionally, interpretation of flow cytograms, which are now commonplace for many point-of-care analyzers, will briefly be described.

Presented by: Dr. Elena Gorman, associate professor of clinical pathology.

Date: Thursday, April 11th,  7:00 – 8:00 pm. Appetizers are served at 6:15.

Location: Magruder Hall room 102, 700 NW 30th St., Corvallis 97331

If you would like to attend, please RSVP to Sara.k.smith@oregonstate.edu.

In 1944, Dr. Dorothy Segal was one of only 55 female veterinarians practicing in the U.S.

When Dr. Dorothy Segal enrolled in the Michigan State University preveterinary program in the 1930s, she had already overcome some challenges—a car crash delayed her planned entrance into college by almost six years—but it quickly became clear that there would be other hurdles in front of Dorothy and the other young women in her class.

“There were seven girls in my class, and that was considered to be just an enormous amount (of women in veterinary school),” said Dr. Segal, now age 90. “The dean at the time did not want women. He said, ‘Go back to the kitchen.’ He literally said that. The first speech he gave was, ‘What are you doing here?’ and he was not joking. I thought to myself, I’m going to make friends with that man if it kills me. … Ultimately, we really became friends.”

If Dr. Segal and her classmates were trailblazers, then the trail is officially open—wide open. Today, women outnumber men in veterinary classes by more than 3-to-1, and approximately 61 percent of U.S. veterinarians are women.*

*Source: American Veterinary Medical Association