Nutrition: From the First Medicine to the First Poison

Severe adverse reactions of the organism to environmental elements have been dizzily rising in humans and pets over the last 50 years. Such reactions can be expulsive (vomit, diarrhea, dandruff, and abundant secretion or excretion) or driven by an inflammatory process (which has been considered as healing process) in charge to destroy every toxic introduced into the body. Thus, it is clear that if a contaminated food is assumed daily, the inflammatory process becomes inevitably chronic. Most common inflammatory processes of dogs and cats originate from this condition, which we observed to be frequently caused by well-defined contaminants: toxic residues of oxytetracycline (OTC). In fact, once everything containing in this compound is eliminated, all inflammatory processes tend to rapidly and spontaneously regress. Here, we reviewed and discussed the problem related to the amount of pharmacological and chemical substances, which are used to increase the production of fruits, vegetables, intensive farming-derived meat and fish, milk, eggs, and grain. Such substances can persist within the products in variable amount and, gradually or rapidly (often in a few hours), poison the organism causing reactions such as allergies, anaphylactic shocks (not so frequent), autoimmune diseases (fortunately not so frequent but continuously increasing), and inflammatory processes, the most common reaction. In this context, nutrition, as a daily and frequent habit, should be taken seriously into account; given that wild animals do not seem to have the same pathologic reactions, there are no doubts that many foods deriving from intensive farming have become a poison rather than a remedy

Functional Pet Foods

Functional foods provide health benefits if they are consumed on regular basis. Some nutraceutical pet diets have been demonstrated to exert health benefits in vitro and in vivo while also exhibiting palatability to the animals. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overall update of commercially available pet diets with proven efficacy against pathologies with an inflammatory background. Research on pet food is still scarce and biased. The ultimate success of functional pet foods will depend on delivering bioactive components in a predictable and assured manner to effectively reduce the risk of disease and/or support the body. Our investigations outlined the improved health status of sick dogs by means of a commercially available nutraceutical pet diet approach. Therefore, additional investigations into the consumption of functional foods in domestic animal nutrition should be done in order to study dietary interventions for disease prevention and treatment

Oxytetracycline-Protein Complex: The Dark Side of Pet Food

Background: Worldwide antibiotic abuse represents a huge burden, which can have a deep impact on pet and human health through nutrition and medicalization representing another way of antibiotic resistance transmission. Objective: We aimed our research to determine a possible complex formation between biological bone substrates, such as proteins, and Oxytetracycline (OTC), an approved antibiotic for use in zootechny, which might determine a toxic effect on K562 cells. Method: Cell viability and HPLC-ESI/QqToF assays were used to assess potential toxicity of bone extract derived from OTC-treated chickens according to standard withdrawal times and from untreated chickens at 24, 48 and 72h of incubation. Results: Cell culture medium with ground bone from chickens reared in the presence of OTC (OTC-CCM) resulted significantly cytotoxic at every incubation time regardless of the bone concentration while cell culture medium with ground bone from chickens reared without OTC (BIO-CCM) resulted significantly cytotoxic only after 72h of incubation. HPLC-ESI/QqToF assay ruled out the possible presence of OTC main derivatives possibly released by bone within culture medium until 1 \u3bcg/mL. Conclusion: The presence of a protein complex with OTC is able to exert a cytotoxic effect once released in the medium after 24-48h of incubation

Adverse food reactions in dogs due to antibiotic residues in pet food: a preliminary study

In the last decades, adverse food reactions have increased considerably in dogs and cats. In this study we report on the possible onset of food intolerances symptoms, including otitis, diarrhoea, generalised anxiety, and dermatitis in a cohort of 8 dogs consuming commercial diets. All dogs received an organic chicken-based diet for 15 days. We performed analysis of blood biochemical parameters, kibble composition, and oxytetracycline (OTC) serum concentration before and after 15 days of organic chicken-based diet supplementation. We hypothesised that a chronic intake of contaminated food enhanced by the presence of nanoparticle aggregates might be at the base of the onset of pharmacologic or idiopathic food intolerances. At the end of the evaluation period, an overall significant reduction of otitis, diarrhoea, generalised anxiety, and dermatitis was observed. Biochemical analyses indicate a significant increase in the alkaline phosphatase, from 41 to 52.5 U/L, after 15 days (\u2022\u2022p <0.01), while a significant decrease in Gamma-glutamyl transferase and urea, from 9.37 to 6.25 U/L and from 32.13 \ub1 8.72 to 22.13 \ub1 7.8 mg/dL, respectively, was observed (\u2022p <0.05). A significant decrease, from 0.22 to 0.02 \u3bcg/mL, in mean OTC serum concentration was also observed (\u2022\u2022p <0.01). Composition analysis revealed the presence of OTC, calcium, aluminium, silicon, and phosphorous nanoparticle aggregates. Further research on a wider sample size would help to confirm the hypothesis proposed here

Mechanical phenotyping of K562 cells by the Micropipette Aspiration Technique allows identifying mechanical changes induced by drugs

Mechanical properties of living cells can be used as reliable markers of their state, such as the presence of a pathological state or their differentiation phase. The mechanical behavior of cells depends on the organization of their cytoskeletal network and the main contribution typically comes from the actomyosin contractile system, in both suspended and adherent cells. In the present study, we investigated the effect of a pharmaceutical formulation (OTC - Ossitetraciclina liquida 20%) used as antibiotic, on the mechanical properties of K562 cells by using the Micropipette Aspiration Technique (MAT). This formulation has been shown to increase in a time dependent way the inflammation and toxicity in terms of apoptosis in in vitro experiments on K562 and other types of cells. Here we show that by measuring the mechanical properties of cells exposed to OTC for different incubation times, it is possible to infer modifications induced by the formulation to the actomyosin contractile system. We emphasize that this system is involved in the first stages of the apoptotic process where an increase of the cortical tension leads to the formation of blebs. We discuss the possible relation between the observed mechanical behavior of cells aspirated inside a micropipette and apoptosis