Risk factors for cutaneous myiasis (blowfly strike) in pet rabbits in Great Britain based on text-mining veterinary electronic health records.

Blowfly strike is a devastating and often rapidly fatal disease in rabbits. In Great Britain (GB), Lucilia sericata is the primary causative species. Despite its severity, there has been minimal investigatory work into the disease in rabbits. Here we used text mining to screen electronic health records (EHRs) from a large sentinel network of 389 veterinary practices in GB between March 2014 and April 2017 for confirmed cases of blowfly strike in rabbits. Blowfly strike was identified in 243 of 42,226 rabbit consultations (0.6%), affecting 205 individual rabbits. The anatomical site of recorded blowfly strike lesions was overwhelmingly the perineal area (n = 109, 52.4%). Less commonly lesions were observed affecting other areas of the body (n = 9, 4.3%) and head (n = 8, 3.8%); in 83 consultations (39.9%), the affected area was not specified. Of the rabbits presenting with blowfly strike, 44.7% were recorded as being euthanized or died. A case control study was used to identify risk factors for blowfly strike in this population. Whilst sex and neuter status in isolation were not significantly associated with blowfly strike, entire female rabbits showed a 3.3 times greater odds of being a case than neutered female rabbits. Rabbits five years of age and over were more than 3.8 times likely to present for blowfly strike. For every 1 °C rise in environmental temperature between 4.67 °C and 17.68 °C, there was a 33% increase risk of blowfly strike, with cases peaking in July or August. Overall blowfly strike cases started earlier and peaked higher in the south of Great Britain. The most northerly latitude studied was at lower risk of blowfly strike than the most southerly (OR = 0.50, p < 0.001). There appeared to be no significant relationship between blowfly strike in rabbits and either the sheep density or rural and urban land coverage types. The results presented here can be used for targeted health messaging to reduce the impact of this deadly disease for rabbits. We propose that real-time temporal and spatial surveillance of the rabbit disease may also help inform sheep control, where the seasonal profile is very similar, and where routine surveillance data is also not available. Our results highlight the value of sentinel databases based on EHRs for research and surveillance.

Small animal disease surveillance: respiratory disease.

Presentation for respiratory disease comprised 1.7 per cent, 2.3 per cent and 2.5 per cent of canine, feline and rabbit consultations, respectively, between January 2014 and December 2015. Coughing was the most frequent respiratory sign reported in dogs (71.1 per cent of consultations); in cats it was sneezing (42.6 per cent). Mean percentage of samples testing positive for feline calicivirus (FCV) was 30.1 per cent in 2014 and 27.9 per cent in 2015. January was the month with the highest percentage of FCV-positive samples in both 2014 and 2015.

Small animal disease surveillance.

This is the first UK small animal disease surveillance report from SAVSNET. Future reports will expand to other syndromes and diseases. As data are collected for longer, the estimates of changes in disease burden will become more refined, allowing more targeted local and perhaps national interventions. Anonymised data can be accessed for research purposes by contacting the authors. SAVSNET welcomes feedback on this report.

A case-control study of pathogen and lifestyle risk factors for diarrhoea in dogs.

Diarrhoea is a common and multi-factorial condition in dogs, the aetiology of which is often incompletely understood. A case-control study was carried out to compare the carriage of some common canine enteric pathogens (enteric coronavirus, parvovirus, distemper, endoparasites, Campylobacter and Salmonella spp.), as well as lifestyle factors such as vaccination history, diet and contact with other species, in dogs presenting at first opinion veterinary practices with and without diarrhoea. Multivariable conditional logistic regression showed that dogs in the study which scavenged or had had a recent change of diet (OR 3.5, p=0.002), had recently stayed in kennels (OR 9.5, p=0.01), or were fed a home-cooked diet (OR 4, p=0.002) were at a significantly greater risk of diarrhoea, whilst being female (OR 0.4, p=0.01), currently up to date with routine vaccinations (OR 0.4, p=0.05) and having contact with horse faeces (OR 0.4, p=0.06) were associated with a reduced risk. None of the pathogens tested for was a significant factor in the final multivariable model suggesting that in this predominantly vaccinated population, diarrhoea may be more associated with lifestyle risk factors than specific pathogens.