Intoxication of dogs and cats with common stimulating, hallucinogenic and dissociative recreational drugs.

Pets can have accidental, intentional, or malicious exposure to illicit drugs. It is a growing concern over the last decade because there is an increase in usage of illicit drugs in humans and diagnosis is difficult. Owners are often not aware of exposure, or they are reluctant to admit possession of recreational drugs in the household due to potential legal consequences. In addition, illicit drugs sold on the black market are often adulterated with other substances resulting in non-specific clinical presentation and aggravation of symptoms. There are affordable onsite diagnostic tests on the market which could facilitate diagnosis of intoxication with illicit drugs, but they give a lot of false positive results due to low specificity of the tests. In this paper we gathered information about the most common recreational drugs such as amphetamines, methamphetamine, 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA), phencyclidine (PCP), lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin mushrooms and cocaine in terms of toxicokinetic properties, mechanism of toxic action, clinical presentation and treatment in dogs and cats.

Pharmacokinetics of an immunomodulating dose of levamisole in weaned pigs.

Levamisole has been shown to stimulate the immune response in immunocompromised humans and animals. However, its use as an adjuvant in immunocompromised weaned pigs prone to colibacillosis has only been experimentally tested but not yet officially approved. Therefore, the aim of these studies was to study the pharmacokinetics (PK) of an immunomodulating dose of levamisole in weaned pigs. For that purpose, 20 weaned crossbred pigs were divided into two treatment groups. In this parallel-design study, a single dose of levamisole (2.5 mg/kg body weight) was administered by the intramuscular (i.m.) or oral (p.o.) route. Statistically significant differences between the i.m. and p.o. routes in terminal beta rate constant (ß), maximum plasma concentration (Cmax), area under the curve (AUC) for plasma concentration-time curve from time zero to infinity (AUC0-inf), area under the plasma concentration-time curve from time 0 to the last quantifiable time point (AUC0-t) were determined. Further research is needed to establish a relationship between the PK and the immunomodulating effect of levamisole in pigs.

In vitro comparison of the effectiveness of polihexanide and chlorhexidine against canine isolates of Staphylococcus pseudintermedius, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Malassezia pachydermatis.

BACKGROUND: Polihexanide (polyhexamethylene biguanide) is an antiseptic substance that plays a prominent role in the treatment of critically colonized or infected acute and chronic wounds in humans. HYPOTHESIS/OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to assess the in vitro antimicrobial efficacy of polihexanide against canine isolates of Staphylococcus pseudintermedius, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Malassezia pachydermatis and compare it with 4.5% chlorhexidine digluconate for two different contact times. METHODS: Ten isolates of each organism were incubated at 37°C for 3 and 5 min, respectively, with each antiseptic diluted 1:2 to 1:4096 in phosphate-buffered saline. RESULTS: Both products showed excellent antimicrobial activity against all isolates tested. No significant differences in antimicrobial efficacy between antiseptics for all isolates were found. With the exception of one isolate of M. pachydermatis at 3 min exposure time, all isolates were completely killed by a dilution of 1:32 of polihexanide as well as chlorhexidine at both exposure times. Although the mean values of break-point concentrations for both antiseptics increased with the longer exposure time of 5 min, there were no significant differences between the two exposure times. The P. aeruginosa isolates were more susceptible than S. pseudintermedius for both antiseptics, and break-point dilutions were significantly higher compared with break-point dilutions obtained by all other treatments. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL IMPORTANCE: The results indicate that polihexanide has comparable in vitro antimicrobial efficacy to chlorhexidine and presents a potential alternative agent for skin and wound antisepsis in veterinary medicine.

Recruitment of intestinal CD45RA+ and CD45RC+ cells induced by a candidate oral vaccine against porcine post-weaning colibacillosis.

To assess the influence of a live attenuated oral vaccine against porcine post-weaning colibacillosis (PWC) induced by enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) on mucosal lymphoid cell CD45 isoforms expression, experimental group of weaned pigs (n=6) was immunized orally with F4ac+ non-ETEC strain (day 0) and challenged with F4ac+ ETEC strain 7 days latter. Non-immunized ETEC-infected pigs (n=6) served as control. All pigs were killed on post-challenge day 7. The small intestine was excised for isolation of jejunal lamina propria (JLP) and ileal Peyer's patch (IPP) lymphocytes and immunohistochemical studies. The results obtained by immunophenotyping of isolated cells show that the proportion of CD45RA+ and CD45RC+ JLP, but not IPP, cells were higher in the non-ETEC-immunized ETEC-infected pigs versus non-immunized infected. Additionally, while CD45RA+ JLP cells increased only slightly, the expression of CD45RC isoform on the JLP cells was significantly higher (P< or =0.01) in the experimental than in the control group. The results of the quantitative phenotypic analysis of isolated lymphocytes were not confirmed by immunohistochemical in situ staining. The majority of intestinal immune cells was found to express CD45RA antigen in situ, but no differences were observed between the two groups of weaned pigs neither in CD45RA+ nor in CD45RC+ cells. Our overall evidence indicates that the increased expression of CD45RC isoform was in fact induced in a limited number of JLP T cells in the vaccinated pigs. This was accompanied with the impaired protection of the vaccinated pigs from challenge-induced PWC.