Dog owners' awareness of and motivations towards pet cadaver donation.

BACKGROUND: Animal cadavers still play an essential role in veterinary education. Many veterinary schools would like to participate in pet cadaver donation schemes for many reasons, including ethical resourcing of cadavers, but finding owners willing to donate their pet is challenging. The aim of this study was to investigate dog owners' awareness of pet cadaver donation. METHODS: The study was conducted using Jisc online surveys with the survey being distributed via social media. In total, 708 people answered a 10-question online questionnaire. RESULTS: The most common reason given for why a dog owner might donate was to assist in the education of future veterinarians (n = 396, 56%). When asked to rank the options given to them upon the passing of their pet, single animal cremation was overwhelmingly the participants' favoured option (n = 483, 68.2%). LIMITATIONS: Factors that might affect the findings, such as religion, financial status and cultural differences, were not explored in this study. CONCLUSIONS: The only incentive shown to increase the likelihood of pet owners donating to a pet cadaver scheme was the return their pet's ashes to them after the cadaver had served its purpose. This study revealed that dog owners currently have very little knowledge of pet cadaver donation.

Interaction between attaching-effacing Escherichia coli O26:K60 and O157:H7 in young lambs.

Recent surveys have shown that Escherichia coli O26 is prevalent in ruminants compared with E. coli O157. These serogroups share common colonisation factors and we hypothesised that prior colonisation by E. coli O26 may show reduced colonisation by E. coli O157. To test this hypothesis, strains of E. coli O26:K60 and O157:H7 were tested in competitive in vitro and in vivo studies. Using an established 6-week-old lamb model, an experimental group of lambs was dosed orally with E. coli O26:K60 and then E. coli O157:H7 four days later. The faecal shedding of O26:K60 and O157:H7 organisms from this experimental group was compared with that from animals dosed with either O26:K60 alone or O157:H7 alone. Shedding data indicated that counts for O157:H7 were unaffected by the competition from O26:K60, whereas the O26:K60 counts were lower when competing with O157:H7.

Influence of geographical origin, host animal and stx gene on the virulence characteristics of Escherichia coli O26 strains.

The influence of geographical origin, host animal and presence of the stx gene on the virulence of Escherichia coli O26 strains from ruminants was determined in this study. A clear association was found between the virulence profile and geographical origin of Shiga-toxigenic E. coli (STEC) O26 strains, with UK STEC O26 strains harbouring virtually identical profiles, whilst central European strains showed considerable heterogeneity in plasmid-encoded genes. The former group were also more likely to be non-motile and katP gene positive. Comparison of UK STEC and atypical enteropathogenic E. coli (aEPEC) O26 strains showed that the presence of the stx1 gene was positively correlated with the presence of espP and katP genes and negatively associated with the presence of the yagP-yagT region and with rhamnose fermentation. In contrast to the uniform profiles of STEC O26 strains from ruminants in the UK, aEPEC O26 strains of bovine and ovine origin showed diverse profiles both within and between groups, and could not be separated into discrete groups. These results indicate that the characteristics of UK O26 strains from ruminants are distinct from those of O26 strains from ruminants and humans in other regions in central Europe. Such differences are expected to influence the zoonotic potential of this pathogen and the subsequent incidence of O26-associated human disease.

Characterization of tccP2 carried by atypical enteropathogenic Escherichia coli.

Atypical enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) comprise an important group of paediatric pathogens. Atypical EPEC have reservoirs in farm and domestic animals where they can be either commensal or pathogenic; serogroup O26 is dominant in humans and animals. Central to intestinal colonization by EPEC is the translocation of the type III secretion system effector Tir into enterocytes, which following phosphorylation (Tir-Yp) recruits Nck to activate the N-WASP actin signalling cascade. The authors have recently shown that typical EPEC strains, belonging to the EPEC-2 lineage, carry a tir gene encoding Tir-Yp and can also use the alternative TccP2 actin-signalling cascade. The aim of this study was to determine if tccP2 is found in atypical EPEC isolated from human and farm animals. tccP2 was found at a frequency of 41% in non-O26 EPEC isolates and in 82.3% of the O26 strains. TccP2 of human and animal strains show high level of sequence identity. It is shown that most strains carry a tir gene encoding Tir-Yp. In addition the authors identified two new variants of tir genes in EPEC O104:H12 and NT:H19 strains.

Colonization, persistence, and tissue tropism of Escherichia coli O26 in conventionally reared weaned lambs.

Escherichia coli O26 is recognized as an emerging pathogen associated with disease in both ruminants and humans. Compared to those of E. coli O157:H7, the shedding pattern and location of E. coli O26 in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) of ruminants are poorly understood. In the studies reported here, an stx-negative E. coli O26 strain of ovine origin was inoculated orally into 6-week-old lambs and the shedding pattern of the O26 strain was monitored by serial bacteriological examination of feces. The location of colonization in the GIT was examined at necropsy at two time points. The numbers of O26 organisms excreted in feces declined from approximately 10(7) to 10(4) CFU per gram of feces by day 7 and continued at this level for a further 3 weeks. Beyond day 30, excretion was from few animals, intermittent, and just above the detection limit. By day 38, all fecal samples were negative, but at necropsy, O26 organisms were recovered from the upper GIT, specifically the ileum. However, no attaching-effacing (AE) lesions were observed. To identify the location of E. coli O26 within the GIT early after inoculation, two lambs were examined postmortem, 4 days postinoculation. High numbers of O26 organisms were recovered from all GIT sites examined, and approximately 10(9) CFU were recovered from 1 gram of ileal tissue from one animal. Despite high numbers of O26 organisms, AE lesions were identified on the mucosa of the ascending colon of only one animal. These data indicate that E. coli O26 readily colonizes 6-week-old lambs, but the sparseness of AE lesions suggests that O26 is well adapted to this host, and mechanisms other than those dependent upon intimin may play a role in persistence.