Postpartum uterine diseases in dairy cows : a review with emphasis on subclinical endometritis

In this review, updated and precise definitions of the most common postpartum uterine diseases in dairy cows are provided. An aberrant uterine environment at inappropriate stages of the reproductive cycle inflicts damage to gametes and zygotes, impairing the reproductive performance of dairy cows. This involves major economic losses for the milk production unit. Consequently, an accurate diagnosis of postpartum uterine diseases is indispensable for practitioners to set up a prompt and efficient treatment. This review furthermore emphasizes on the new perspectives regarding diagnosis and treatment of subclinical endometritis, a highly prevalent uterine disease that is often overlooked by practitioners while causing major reproductive problems. Based on a more profound clinical understanding of the postpartum uterine disease complex, practitioners will be able to better use the available diagnostic tools and therefore apply a more efficient therapeutic approach

Cytological endometritis diagnosed at artificial insemination in repeat breeder dairy cows

This study aimed to (i) assess the prevalence of cytological endometritis (CYTO) diagnosed at artificial insemination (AI); (ii) evaluate the effect of CYTO on the pregnancy outcome of the same AI sample; and (iii) determine the risk factors associated with CYTO diagnosed at AI in repeat breeder (RB) dairy cows. We analysed the productive and reproductive performances of 146 RB Holstein-Friesian cows. To obtain a CYTO sample at AI, we used the cytotape technique. Generalized mixed effect models were computed to find the risk factors associated with the pregnancy and CYTO outcome. Based on 1% PMN cut-off point, the CYTO prevalence at AI in RB cows was 25.3%. The overall pregnancy at AI was 44.2%. The conception rate in CYTO-positive (n=37) RB cows was 29.7% versus 49.5% for CYTO-negative (n=109) cows. A RB cow diagnosed CYTO positive at AI had 0.47 [odds ratio (OR)] odds to become pregnant in comparison with a CYTO-negative cow. Cows that produced more milk than their counterparts in this study had increased odds (OR=1.01) to be CYTO positive at AI. A novel risk factor positively associated with CYTO diagnosed at AI in RB cows was the level of daily milk urea (OR=1.11). To conclude, CYTO at the moment of AI had a significantly negative effect on the pregnancy outcome in RB dairy cows. However, as only one of fourth of RB cows is affected with CYTO at AI, it may not be considered a key element associated with the RB syndrome

The effect of pegbovigrastim on circulating neutrophil count in dairy cattle : a randomized controlled trial

Previous research in various species has shown that granulocyte-colony stimulating factor stimulates the production and release of neutrophils from bone marrow. The objective of this study was to characterize the effects of polyethylene glycol-bound bovine granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (pegbovigrastim; Imrestor, Elanco) on circulating leukocyte counts. Thirty-four Holstein cows were randomly assigned to receive 2 injections of either physiologic saline (n = 16) or pegbovigrastim (n = 18), 7 days before expected calving (d - 7) and within 24 hours after calving (d 0). Cows were sampled at d - 7, d - 6, d 0, d + 1, d + 7, and d +/- 21, relative to calving. Only cows for which the interval from the first injection to calving was >= 4 d and <= 10 d were included, such that the interval (mean +/- SD) from first treatment to calving was 6.7 +/- 1.9 d. Treatment effects were assessed with mixed linear regression models. After the first injection, neutrophil counts (x10(9)/L) in pegbovigrastim-treated cows increased from 4.3 (95% CI 3.8 to 4.8) at d - 7 to 18.2 (CI 16.3 to 20.3) at d - 6 (P < 0.0001). Their counts then decreased from d - 6 to d 0, when the second injection was administered, at a rate of - 0.31 x 10(9) neutrophils/L/day (P < 0.0001). After the second injection, neutrophil counts increased from 16.4 (CI 13.7 to 19.6) at d 0 to 32.8 (CI 25.2 to 42.7) at d + 1 (P < 0.0001), after which counts decreased at a rate of -3.73 x 10(9) neutrophils/L/day until d + 7 (P < 0.0001). Counts continued to decrease from d + 7 to d + 21 at a slower rate of -0.43 x 10(9) neutrophils/L/day (P < 0.0001), until baseline levels were reached. Conversely, in control cows, neutrophil counts were unchanged from d - 7 to d - 6 (P = 0.86) after the first injection and then decreased from 6.1 (CI 5.0-7.3) at d 0, to 3.2 (CI 2.4-4.2) at d + 1 (P < 0.0001) after the second injection. Neutrophil count was greater (P < 0.001) in pegbovigrastim-treated than in control cows at days -6, 0, +1 and +7. Area under the curve (cells x 10(9)/L per 28 d) for neutrophil counts in the pegbovigrastim group was 429, versus 99 in the control group (P < 0.0001). The response to each injection of pegbovigrastim was additive and consisted of 95% segmented neutrophils, suggesting that the effect of the treatment was to release mature neutrophils from a substantial pool available in the bone marrow. The sustained increase in circulating neutrophil count around the time of calving may contribute to improved health during the peripartum transition period

Primary replication and invasion of the bovine gammaherpesvirus BoHV-4 in the genital mucosae

Bovine herpesvirus 4 (BoHV-4) is a gammaherpesvirus that is widespread in cattle. Ex vivo models with bovine genital tract mucosa explants were set up to study molecular/cellular BoHV-4-host interactions. Bovine posterior vagina, cervix and uterus body were collected from cows at two stages of the reproductive cycle for making mucosa explants. The BoHV-4 replication kinetics and characteristics within the three different mucosae of animals in the follicular and luteal phase were assessed by virus titration. The number of plaques, plaque latitude and number of infected cells were determined by immunofluorescence. BoHV-4 replicated in a productive way in all genital mucosal tissues. It infected single individual cells in both epithelium and lamina propria of the genital mucosae at 24 hours post-inoculation (hpi). Later, small BoHV-4 epithelial plaques were formed that did not spread through the basement membrane. 50% of the number of BoHV-4 infected cells were identified as cytokeratin(+) and CD172a(+) cells in the three parts of the genital tract at 24 hpi. Upon a direct injection of genital explants with BoHV-4, fibrocytes became infected, indicating that the unidentified 50% of the infected cells are most probably fibrocytes. In this study, in vivo-related in vitro genital tract models were successfully established and the early stage of the pathogenesis of a genital infection was clarified: BoHV-4 starts with a productive infection of epithelial cells in the reproductive tract, forming small foci followed by a non-productive infection of surveilling monocytic cells which help BoHV-4 to invade into deeper tissues

Predição da solubilidade mútua de água em hidrocarbonetos e óleos utilizando modelo COSMO-SAC

O petróleo é um recurso natural e matéria prima para diversos segmentos industriais. Essa commodity envolve um mercado de movimentações financeiras massivas além de interesses de instituições de pesquisa pelo constante desenvolvimento de tecnologias visando o aumento da eficiência e rendimentos das operações. Especificamente sobre processos de extração, neste trabalho foi estudada a modelagem do equilíbrio de fases líquidas e a sua dependência com a temperatura da mistura não-ideal do processo de tratamento primário do petróleo cru. Modelos de energia de Gibbs de excesso emergentes quanto a suas bases teóricas e preditividade, COSMO-SAC e F-SAC, foram comparados quantitativamente no que se refere à estimação da solubilidade da água na fase rica em óleos e qualitativamente nas solubilidades de ambas as fases no sistema formado por água e hidrocarbonetos de estrutura definida. A técnica de pseudocomponentes foi aplicada para caracterização dos petróleos estudados e aproximações quanto às estruturas desses pseudocomponentes foram avaliadas visando à determinação de parâmetros geométricos necessários para a estimação das interações entre os componentes das fases líquidas. O simulador de processos iiSE foi utilizado para o cálculo do equilíbrio termodinâmico entre as fase. Os modelos F-SAC e COSMO-SAC foram comparados entre si. Ambos modelos foram acoplados à EoS de SRK e regra de mistura SCMR. O erro absoluto médio foi calculado com base nas curvas de solubilidade e pontos experimentais das referências sendo o modelo F-SAC um pouco superior ao COSMO-SAC quanto à qualidade de predição com 0,2108 contra 0,2681. Não houve indícios que a aproximação estrutural dos pseudocomponentes de massa molar definida por unidades repetidoras de grupos –CH3 e –CH2– implicou em erros significativos.Oil is a natural resource and a feedstock to several industrial segments. This comodity embraces a market of massive financial transactions and interests of research and constant development of technologies to increase the efficiency and yield of operations. Specificaly about the extraction processes, in this work the non-ideal liquid-liquid equilibria of primary oil treatment was studied and modelled considering the temperature dependency. Excess Gibbs free energy arising models, COSMO-SAC and F-SAC, were quantitatively compared in the prediction of water solubility in the oil-rich phase and qualitatively regarding both phases in the system composed of water and well-defined hidrocarbons. Pseudization technique was applied to characterize the studied crude oils and the hypothesis of the molecular pseudostructures was evaluated aiming to determinate the geometrical parameters needed to estimate the interactions between components of liquid phases. The calculation o the thermodinamic equilibrium was performed in the iiSE process simulator. The models F-SAC and COSMO-SAC were compared against each other. These models were coupled to SRK EoS and SCMR mixing rule. The absolute average deviation was calculated based on the solubility curves and experimental data from literature, being the F-SAC model slightly better than COSMO-SAC regarding it’s prediction quality with 0,2108 of absolute average deviation against 0,2681. There were not indications that the structural assumption of well-defined molar mass pseudocomponents consisting in repeating units of the groups –CH3 and –CH2– implicated in significant errors

Síntese de controladores repetitivos de alta ordem para sistemas com saturação

O problema de seguimento/rejeição de sinais periódicos é cada vez mais explorado do ponto de vista prático, especialmente nos casos em que o sistema está sujeito à saturação do sinal de controle e em que a frequência fundamental do sinal de interesse varia com o tempo. Este trabalho visa propor um controlador capaz de atuar em sistemas que sofrem com este tipo de problema, garantindo um adequado nível de seguimento quando ocorre variação de frequência e minimizando os efeitos da saturação na estabilidade e desempenho do sistema em malha fechada. A abordagem utilizada considera uma formulação no espaço de estados do sistema e a adição de um laço de anti-windup estático à topologia do controlador repetitivo de alta ordem, uma vez que esta topologia já apresenta naturalmente robustez para variações na frequência dos sinais de interesse. Os resultados apresentam melhoria de desempenho durante regime transitório para os casos em que ocorre saturação, quando comparados com a formulação sem o laço de anti-windup. Além disso, foi verificada uma melhoria no desempenho em regime permanente para os casos em que há variação na frequência de referência, se comparados com a estrutura tradicional do controlador repetitivo.The periodic signal tracking/rejection problem is increasingly exploited from a practical point of view, especially in the cases when the system is subject to saturation of the control signal and when the fundamental frequency of the signal of interest varies with time. This work aims to purpose a controller able to act in systems that suffer with this kind of problems, ensuring an adequate tracking performance when there is frequency variation and minimizing the saturation effects in stability and closed-loop performance. The approach considers a state-space representation of the system and the addition of a static anti-windup loop to the high order repetitive controller topology, since this topology naturally presents robustness regarding variations in the frequency of the signal of interest. The results presented improvement in the transient performance for the cases when the saturation occurs, when compared to the formulation without the anti-windup loop. Besides that, an improvement in the steady state performance was verified for the cases when there is variation in the reference frequency, if compared to the traditional repetitive controller structure

Creating chimeras: Embryonic stem cells incorporated

Gene modification within the murine genome has become a powerful and invaluable tool to investigate development. One example of the utility of such technology is providing a method by which researchers can follow cells throughout development via the introduced genetic modifications.Fil: Pascottini, Osvaldo Bogado. University of Chicago; Estados UnidosFil: Goszczynski, Daniel Estanislao. University of Chicago; Estados Unidos. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Nguyen, Alexandra L.. University of Chicago; Estados Unido

Letter Ruling 12-4: Massachusetts Sales/Use Tax on"Call Tracking Service"

Previous research in various species has shown that granulocyte-colony stimulating factor stimulates the production and release of neutrophils from bone marrow. The objective of this study was to characterize the effects of polyethylene glycol-bound bovine granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (pegbovigrastim; Imrestor, Elanco) on circulating leukocyte counts. Thirty-four Holstein cows were randomly assigned to receive 2 injections of either physiologic saline (n = 16) or pegbovigrastim (n = 18), 7 days before expected calving (d -7) and within 24 hours after calving (d 0). Cows were sampled at d -7, d -6, d 0, d +1, d +7, and d +21, relative to calving. Only cows for which the interval from the first injection to calving was ≥ 4 d and ≤ 10 d were included, such that the interval (mean ± SD) from first treatment to calving was 6.7 ± 1.9 d. Treatment effects were assessed with mixed linear regression models. After the first injection, neutrophil counts (×109/ L) in pegbovigrastim-treated cows increased from 4.3 (95% CI 3.8 to 4.8) at d -7 to 18.2 (CI 16.3 to 20.3) at d -6 (P < 0.0001). Their counts then decreased from d -6 to d 0, when the second injection was administered, at a rate of -0.31 ×109 neutrophils/L/day (P < 0.0001). After the second injection, neutrophil counts increased from 16.4 (CI 13.7 to 19.6) at d 0 to 32.8 (CI 25.2 to 42.7) at d +1 (P < 0.0001), after which counts decreased at a rate of -3.73 ×109 neutrophils/L/day until d +7 (P < 0.0001). Counts continued to decrease from d +7 to d +21 at a slower rate of -0.43 ×109 neutrophils/L/day (P < 0.0001), until baseline levels were reached. Conversely, in control cows, neutrophil counts were unchanged from d -7 to d -6 (P = 0.86) after the first injection and then decreased from 6.1 (CI 5.0-7.3) at d 0, to 3.2 (CI 2.4-4.2) at d +1 (P < 0.0001) after the second injection. Neutrophil count was greater (P < 0.001) in pegbovigrastim-treated than in control cows at days -6, 0, +1 and +7. Area under the curve (cells ×109/ L per 28 d) for neutrophil counts in the pegbovigrastim group was 429, versus 99 in the control group (P < 0.0001). The response to each injection of pegbovigrastim was additive and consisted of 95% segmented neutrophils, suggesting that the effect of the treatment was to release mature neutrophils from a substantial pool available in the bone marrow. The sustained increase in circulating neutrophil count around the time of calving may contribute to improved health during the peripartum transition period