Knowledge and Perceptions on Malaria and Its Association with Aquatic Habitats

Background: Malaria remains the major cause of morbidity and mortality among children in Kenya. About 70 percent of the population is at risk of infection, and roughly 34,000 young children die of malaria-related causes annually.Objective: To investigate the knowledge and perceptions of the local people for malaria in relation to aquatic habitats along the Kenyan Lake Victoria basin.Design: Community-based cross-sectional study.Setting: The Kenyan Lake Victoria basin Region.Subjects: Two hundred and fourty three individuals (both women and men residing in the beaches and surrounding areas) were interviewed about their knowledge and perceptions regarding malaria.Results: Mosquitoes were perceived to be the main cause of malaria. Most respondents were familiar with the main signs and symptoms of mild malaria. Majority of the respondents had poor knowledge of mosquito breeding habitats with 45% mentioning the lake and only 18.6 and 8.9% mentioning ponds and dams, respectively. Most female respondents did not know the difference between mosquitoes and lake flies, P=0.03, Fishers exact test. The majority (97.5%) of the respondents reported seeking conventional malaria treatment from health institutions.Conclusion: Mosquitoes are perceived to be the main cause of malaria by both males and females. A significant proportion of the respondents were familiar with the main signs and symptoms of malaria and sought conventional medicine for treatment of the disease. Most of the respondents, however, had poor knowledge on the breeding habitats of mosquitoes. Concerted effort is needed to scale-up health education and improve the knowledge of the community about mosquitoes and their breeding habitats, particularly malaria vectors which do not breed in deep lake waters. Effective anti-malarial drugs should also be available at the grassroots level where the problem of malaria is rampant

The changing global distribution and prevalence of canine transmissible venereal tumour.

BACKGROUND: The canine transmissible venereal tumour (CTVT) is a contagious cancer that is naturally transmitted between dogs by the allogeneic transfer of living cancer cells during coitus. CTVT first arose several thousand years ago and has been reported in dog populations worldwide; however, its precise distribution patterns and prevalence remain unclear. RESULTS: We analysed historical literature and obtained CTVT prevalence information from 645 veterinarians and animal health workers in 109 countries in order to estimate CTVT's former and current global distribution and prevalence. This analysis confirmed that CTVT is endemic in at least 90 countries worldwide across all inhabited continents. CTVT is estimated to be present at a prevalence of one percent or more in dogs in at least 13 countries in South and Central America as well as in at least 11 countries in Africa and 8 countries in Asia. In the United States and Australia, CTVT was reported to be endemic only in remote indigenous communities. Comparison of current and historical reports of CTVT indicated that its prevalence has declined in Northern Europe, possibly due to changes in dog control laws during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Analysis of factors influencing CTVT prevalence showed that presence of free-roaming dogs was associated with increased CTVT prevalence, while dog spaying and neutering were associated with reduced CTVT prevalence. Our analysis indicated no gender bias for CTVT and we found no evidence that animals with CTVT frequently harbour concurrent infectious diseases. Vincristine was widely reported to be the most effective therapy for CTVT. CONCLUSIONS: Our results provide a survey of the current global distribution of CTVT, confirming that CTVT is endemic in at least 90 countries worldwide. Additionally, our analysis highlights factors that continue to modify CTVT's prevalence around the world and implicates free-roaming dogs as a reservoir for the disease. Our analysis also documents the disappearance of the disease from the United Kingdom during the twentieth century, which appears to have been an unintentional result of the introduction of dog control policies.This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final version of this article has been published by BioMed Central: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1746-6148/10/168

Chronic Pododemodicosis in a Great Dane

A 4 year old Great Dane was presented to the Small Animal Clinic with a history of chronic swelling of all the paws. This animal had been treated for over 3 months but the condition was progressively worsening. Clinical   examination revealed all vital parameters were within normal ranges. There was gross swelling of all the paws, the skin was erythematous,  hyperpigmented and hyperkeratotic. There was also diffuse purulent   discharge from parts of the paws. Skin scrapings were positive for Demodectic mange. Staphylococcus aureus and Proteus sensitive to Gentamicin and Norfloxacin were isolated from swabs taken for culture and sensitivity. This report describes the case and the management of pododermatitis due to Demodicosis complicated with bacterial infection and emphasizes on the need for definitive diagnosis of such cases before any treatment is instituted.Keywords-Pododermatitis, demodicosis , managemen

Fertility of Zero-Grazed Dairy Cattle following Hormone Treatment and Fixed-Time Artificial Insemination

Reproduction is important to dairy herds and achievement of economically optimal performance still remains a substantial multifactorial challenge in many herds. Poor estrus expression and detection, repeat breeding, prolonged postpartum anestrus and delayed onset of puberty are some of the limiting factors to attainment of optimum reproductive efficiency in zero-grazed herds. This study investigated the fertility of anestrous and repeat breeder zerograzed dairy animals following induction of ovarian cyclicity, synchronization of ovulation, and fixed time insemination. The following three categories of animals were recruited into the study: 1) Delayed puberty or anestrus in heifers (n=26), 2) Prolonged postpartum anestrus (n=23), and 3) Repeat breeding cows and heifers (n=28). The seventy seven animals (69 Friesians, 7 Ayrshires and 1 Guernsey) were all zero-grazed and had a median age and parity of 5.0 years and 2.5 respectively, and a body condition score of at least 2.5 on a scale of 1 to 5. All study animals were intramuscularly injected with Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone (GnRH) on Day 0, Prostaglandin F2α (PGF2α) on Day 7, and GnRH on Day 9. Treated animals had timed artificial insemination (AI) 8-24 hours after the last injection. Pregnancy diagnosis was performed by rectal palpation 60 days post-AI. The pregnancy rate for anestrous cows (6/23) was 26.1%, repeat breeder cows (5/14) 35.7%, anestrous heifers (16/26) 61.5% and repeat breeder heifers (5/14) 35.7%. This treatment protocol may improve fertility outcomes in zero-grazed units where anestrus is a problem, reproductive skills are deficient, there is scarcity of labor or where there is an inability to commit the required time for estrus detection. Kenya Veterinarian Vol. 30 (2) 2006: pp. 68-7

Sero-epidemiological survey of Coxiella burnetii in livestock and humans in Tana River and Garissa counties in Kenya

Background: Coxiella burnetii is a widely distributed pathogen, but data on its epidemiology in livestock, and human populations remains scanty, especially in developing countries such as Kenya. We used the One Health approach to estimate the seroprevalance of C. burnetii in cattle, sheep, goats and human populations in Tana River county, and in humans in Garissa county, Kenya. We also identified potential determinants of exposure among these hosts. Methods: Data were collected through a cross-sectional study with a cluster sampling design. Serum samples were taken from 2,727 animals (466 cattle, 1,333 goats, and 928 sheep) and 974 humans and screened for Phase I/II IgG antibodies against C. burnetii using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Data on potential factors associated with animal and human exposure were collected using a structured questionnaire. Multivariable analyses were performed with households as random effects to adjust for the within-household correlation of C. burnetii exposure among animals and humans, respectively. Results: The overall apparent seroprevalence estimates of C. burnetii in livestock and humans were 12.80% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 11.57-14.11) and 24.44% (95% CI: 21.77-27.26), respectively. In livestock, the seroprevalence differed significantly by species (p < 0.01). The highest seroprevalence estimates were observed in goats 15.22% (95% CI: 13.34-17.27), then sheep 14.22% (95% CI: 12.04-16.64) and with cattle 3.00% (95% CI; 1.65-4.99) showing lower values. Herd-level seropositivity of C. burnetii in livestock was not positively associated with human exposure. Multivariable results showed that female animals had higher odds of seropositivity for C. burnetii than males, while for animal age groups, adult animals had higher odds of seropositivity than calves, kids or lambs. For livestock species, both sheep and goats had significantly higher odds of seropositivity than cattle. In human populations, men had a significantly higher odds of testing positive for C. burnetii than women. Conclusions: This study provides evidence of livestock and human exposure to C. burnetii which could have serious economic implications on livestock production and impact on human health. These results also highlight the need to establish active surveillance in the study area to reduce the disease burden associated with this pathogen

Why reference to the past is difficult for agrammatic speakers

<p>Many studies have shown that verb inflections are difficult to produce for agrammatic aphasic speakers: they are frequently omitted and substituted. The present article gives an overview of our search to understanding why this is the case. The hypothesis is that grammatical morphology referring to the past is selectively impaired in agrammatic aphasia. That is, verb inflections for past tense and perfect aspect are hard to produce. Furthermore, verb clusters that refer to the past will be affected as well, even if the auxiliary is in present tense, as in he has been writing a letter. It will be argued that all these verb forms referring to the past require discourse linking [Zagona, K. (2003). Tense and anaphora: Is there a tense-specific theory of coreference. In A. Barrs (Ed.), Anaphora: A reference guide (pp. 140-171). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing] and discourse linking is affected in agrammatic aphasia [Avrutin, S. (2006). Weak syntax. In K. Amunts, & Y. Grodzinsky (Eds.), Broca's region (pp. 49-62). New York: Oxford Press]. This hypothesis has been coined the PAst DIscourse LInking Hypothesis (PADILIH) [Bastiaanse, R., Bamyaci, E., Hsu, C.-J., Lee, J., Yarbay Duman, T., & Thompson, C. K. (2011). Time reference in agrammatic aphasia: A cross-linguistic study. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 24, 652-673]. The PADILIH has been tested in several languages and populations that have hardly been studied before in aphasiology: languages such as Turkish, Swahili and Indonesian were included, as well as monolingual and bilingual populations. In all these populations, the same test has been used: the Test for Assessing Reference of Time [Bastiaanse, R., Jonkers, R., & Thompson, C. K. (2008). Test for assessing reference of time (TART). Groningen: University of Groningen] to enable reliable comparisons between the languages. The results show that the PADILIH predicts the performance of agrammatic speakers very well: discourse-linked grammatical morphemes expressing time reference to the past are hard to produce for agrammatic speakers, whereas non-discourse-linked verb inflections (for present and future) are relatively spared. In languages that use aspectual adverbs (free-standing and optional time reference markers), such as Chinese and Indonesian, time reference to all time frames is impaired, since all aspectual adverbs, regardless of the time frame they refer to, require discourse linking. Remarkably, the problems are not restricted to grammatical morphemes: the production of temporal lexical adverbs is impaired as well.</p>