Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Multiprotein Biomarkers in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal progressive motor neuron disease, for which there are still no diagnostic/prognostic test and therapy. Specific molecular biomarkers are urgently needed to facilitate clinical studies and speed up the development of effective treatments.We used a two-dimensional difference in gel electrophoresis approach to identify in easily accessible clinical samples, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), a panel of protein biomarkers that are closely associated with ALS. Validations and a longitudinal study were performed by immunoassays on a selected number of proteins. The same proteins were also measured in PBMC and spinal cord of a G93A SOD1 transgenic rat model. We identified combinations of protein biomarkers that can distinguish, with high discriminatory power, ALS patients from healthy controls (98%), and from patients with neurological disorders that may resemble ALS (91%), between two levels of disease severity (90%), and a number of translational biomarkers, that link responses between human and animal model. We demonstrated that TDP-43, cyclophilin A and ERp57 associate with disease progression in a longitudinal study. Moreover, the protein profile changes detected in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of ALS patients are suggestive of possible intracellular pathogenic mechanisms such as endoplasmic reticulum stress, nitrative stress, disturbances in redox regulation and RNA processing.Our results indicate that PBMC multiprotein biomarkers could contribute to determine amyotrophic lateral sclerosis diagnosis, differential diagnosis, disease severity and progression, and may help to elucidate pathogenic mechanisms

Broilers welfare, health and production in organic and conventional systems.

Animal welfare, product quality and organic or niche production system rise to more and more interest. Organic farming has grown rapidly in European and Italian agriculture during the last decade. The aim of the trial was to compare five organic and five conventional broiler farms from the productive, health and behavioural point of view. The productive performance showed that conventional broilers (CB) consumed significantly less feed then organic broilers (OB) and the first got a better FCR.. These different figures could be due to the different environment and life style. OB are more exposed to natural climate, they can move much more and then they increase feed consumption and FCR become worsen. The different age at slaughter determined the significant difference observed for the final body weight of 2.943±0.2 CB vs 4.486±0.2 of OB (P=0.0003). The same trend was observed for carcass and chest weight. The first weighed 3.530±0.2 g for CB vs 4.410±0.2 for OB (P=0.01) and the second 2.450±0.15 for CB and 3.150±0.15 for OB (P= 0.01). The mortality was similar and the main cause was SDS related to genetic factors. From the behavioural point of view the result might indicate that less intensive farming and the presence of an enriched environment, as in organic farming, seems to promote a better adaptation of animals, both to the environment and to man presence, ensuring better welfare conditions

Monitoring the welfare of sheep in conventional and organic farms using an ANI 35 L derived method

The present study was undertaken to evaluate the inter-observer reliability of a welfare monitoring scheme to be applied to sheep, and compare the welfare state of the animals between 10 organic and 10 conventional sheep farms. No significant differences were observed between organic and conventional farms in terms of housing characteristics and animal based parameters (P>0.10). This result may be due to the fact that most of the farms, both conventional and organic, based their farming systems on an extensive use of the land by grazing animals. The monitoring protocol proved to be feasible (the mean time needed to perform the assessment of welfare was 45 min per farm) and reliable: a significant correlation between observers was observed for total score and all sheets (P0.10)