Ocular abnormalities in a herd of Old Kladruber Horses: A cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVE: To screen a closed herd of the Old Kladruber Horses (OKH) for the prevalence of ocular disorders and report normal ocular variations. ANIMALS STUDIED: Two hundred and sixty-one horses, 122 Old Kladruber Gray Horses, and 139 Old Kladruber Black Horses owned by the National Stud Farm Kladruby nad Labem, Czech Republic, were included in the study with signalment and pedigree information recorded. PROCEDURES: Bilateral ocular examination of manually restrained horses was performed in a darkened environment by a single examiner (RA), using a portable slit-lamp biomicroscope, direct ophthalmoscope, and monocular indirect ophthalmoscopy using a Finnoff transilluminator and 20 D condensing lens. Fluorescein testing was performed when indicated. RESULTS: The animal ages ranged from 3 months to 27 years (mean 7.82 years, median 6 years). The gender ratio (males:females) was 109:152. Ophthalmological abnormalities were found in 133 (50.96%) horses; with right and left eyes affected equally. The most common abnormalities were cataract formation (35 horses), iris hyperpigmentation (29 horses), alterations in corpora nigra size (26 horses), nonsenile vitreal degeneration (24 horses), linear keratopathy (11 horses), corneal stromal haze (nine horses) and corneal subepithelial punctate opacities (nine horses). The most frequent variations of normal ocular anatomy were posterior lenticular suture lines (222 horses), tapetal hypoplasia (95 horses) resulting in a multi-colored tapetal fundus (31 horses), nuclear sclerosis (48 horses), and senile vitreal degeneration (30 horses). CONCLUSIONS: Ocular disorders were relatively common in OKH, but typically not vision threatening and not interfering with the quality of life.

Congenital Microphthalmic Syndrome in a Swine.

A 17-week-old crossbred finishing pig was presented for lameness of approximately one week. Clinical evaluation, including ophthalmologic examination, revealed ataxia, partial flaccid paresis of the pelvic limbs, skin lesions at feet and claws, and severely reduced vision/blindness. Both eyes had multiple persistent pupillary membranes (iris-to-iris and iris-to-lens) and hypermature cataracts. Histopathological examination of the eyes revealed microphthalmia, microphakia with cataract formation, myovascularised membrane in the vitreous, retinal detachment, and retinal dysplasia. Microscopic examination of tissues collected postmortem demonstrated nonsuppurative polioencephalomyelitis with the most prominent inflammatory lesions in the lumbar spinal cord. Subsequently, presumed Teschen/Talfan disease was confirmed by porcine teschovirus identification in the spinal cord using the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). To the authors' knowledge, this is the first case report describing in detail histopathological changes in the porcine congenital microphthalmic syndrome.

The structure and functional analysis of canine T-cell receptor beta region.

VDJ recombination is a key process in T-cell receptor (TCR) and immunoglobulin (Ig) molecules development. Comparison of ENSEMBL and GenBank database information revealed major differences in dog T-cell receptor beta (TRB) region annotations. ENSEMBL based genomic alignment of dog TRB sequence with human sequence and annotation showed a very similar structure of TRB. However, there is only one cluster of DJC segments in dogs. In dog, 38 V segments are followed by 1 D segment, 6 J segments and 1 C segment. Like humans and mice, dogs have another V segment opposite in orientation downstream of the C segment. V segments anticipated were analyzed using the RT-PCR and capillary electrophoresis. Thirty-one of them were identified in samples of thymus and spleen RNA and thus believed to be subjected to chromosomal rearrangement and RNA splicing. We identified and analyzed probable structure of canine TCR beta region, which is different when compared to sequences published in GenBank or ENSEMBL databases.