Six-year follow-up of slaughterhouse surveillance (2008-2013): the Catalan Slaughterhouse Support Network (SESC)

Meat inspection has the ultimate objective of declaring the meat and offal obtained from carcasses of slaughtered animals fit or unfit for human consumption. This safeguards the health of consumers by ensuring that the food coming from these establishments poses no risk to public health. Concomitantly, it contributes to animal disease surveillance. The Catalan Public Health Protection Agency (Generalitat de Catalunya) identified the need to provide its meat inspectors with a support structure to improve diagnostic capacity: the Slaughterhouse Support Network (SESC). The main goal of the SESC was to offer continuing education to meat inspectors to improve the diagnostic capacity for lesions observed in slaughterhouses. With this aim, a web-based application was designed that allowed meat inspectors to submit their inquiries, images of the lesions, and samples for laboratory analysis. This commentary reviews the cases from the first 6 years of SESC operation (2008–2013). The program not only provides continuing education to inspectors but also contributes to the collection of useful information on animal health and welfare. Therefore, SESC complements animal disease surveillance programs, such as those for tuberculosis, bovine cysticercosis, and porcine trichinellosis, and is a powerful tool for early detection of emerging animal diseases and zoonoses

Municipal mortality due to thyroid cancer in Spain

BACKGROUND: Thyroid cancer is a tumor with a low but growing incidence in Spain. This study sought to depict its spatial municipal mortality pattern, using the classic model proposed by Besag, York and Mollié. METHODS: It was possible to compile and ascertain the posterior distribution of relative risk on the basis of a single Bayesian spatial model covering all of Spain's 8077 municipal areas. Maps were plotted depicting standardized mortality ratios, smoothed relative risk (RR) estimates, and the posterior probability that RR > 1. RESULTS: From 1989 to 1998 a total of 2,538 thyroid cancer deaths were registered in 1,041 municipalities. The highest relative risks were mostly situated in the Canary Islands, the province of Lugo, the east of La Coruña (Corunna) and western areas of Asturias and Orense. CONCLUSION: The observed mortality pattern coincides with areas in Spain where goiter has been declared endemic. The higher frequency in these same areas of undifferentiated, more aggressive carcinomas could be reflected in the mortality figures. Other unknown genetic or environmental factors could also play a role in the etiology of this tumor

Cytokines transcript levels in lung and lymphoid organs during genotype 1 Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV) infection

Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) is one of the most economically important diseases of swine. PRRS virus (PRRSV) infection in the pig is characterized by a weak or absent host innate immune response. The underlying mechanisms of PRRSV pathogenesis are still unclear. The analysis of transcript levels represents an alternative to immunoassays for the detection of cytokines that sometimes are difficult to detect due to their low amounts. This study sets out to determine the differences in pathogenesis and the immune response between lung, tonsil, tracheobronchial lymph node (Tb-LN) and retropharyngeal LN (Rf-LN) of PRRSV 2982 strain infected pigs. PRRSV strain 2982 avoided the onset of an effective innate immune response, especially in PRRSV main target (lung) and reservoir (tonsil) organs. PRRSV lead to an impaired expression of IFN-α and TNF-α gene expression, which finally induced a weak and delayed adaptive immune response through an inefficient IL-12 and IFN-γ expression. Finally, PRRSV replication favored the expression of the anti-inflammatory IL-10 cytokine in infected pigs. © 2014 Elsevier B.V