Nutritional consulting in regular veterinary practices in Belgium and the Netherlands

BACKGROUND: Increased interest in nutrition by dog and cat owners stresses the importance of providing tailored nutritional guidance for each patient by veterinarians. The World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) has provided guidelines to help veterinarians implement this in every-day patient care, by screening patients for the presence of nutritional risk factors, establishing tailored nutritional plans and providing adequate patient follow-up tools. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to assess the use of nutritional assessments in companion animal practices, and to investigate differences between Dutch and Belgian veterinarians. METHODS: A survey was conducted among Dutch and Belgian veterinarians. Of the 423 respondents, 53% were from Belgium, and 47% were from the Netherlands. RESULTS: Only 21% had prior knowledge of the WSAVA nutritional assessment guidelines. General trends in the usage of nutritional assessments were similar in the examined countries. Aside from weighing, diet evaluation by collecting dietary information and body condition or muscle condition scoring were used infrequently, mostly due to insufficient knowledge of the methods. Nutritional recommendations were often made as part of a treatment plan, and were mostly made by veterinarians, but in Dutch practices also by veterinary nurses. CONCLUSION: Despite the fact that nutritional recommendations are a regular part of treatment plans, nutritional risk factors may be missed due to a lack of completely performed nutritional assessments. It remains important to promote the benefits of regular nutritional assessments to veterinarians, which will improve patients' health

Long-term expression of human coagulation factor VIII and correction of hemophilia A after in vivo retroviral gene transfer in factor VIII-deficient mice

Hemophilia A is caused by a deficiency in coagulation factor VIII (FVIII) and predisposes to spontaneous bleeding that can be life-threatening or lead to chronic disabilities. It is well suited for gene therapy because a moderate increase in plasma FVIII concentration has therapeutic effects. Improved retroviral vectors expressing high levels of human FVIII were pseudotyped with the vesicular stomatitis virus G glycoprotein, were concentrated to high-titers (10(9)–10(10) colony-forming units/ml), and were injected intravenously into newborn, FVIII-deficient mice. High-levels (≥200 milliunits/ml) of functional human FVIII production could be detected in 6 of the 13 animals, 4 of which expressed physiologic or higher levels (500–12,500 milliunits/ml). Five of the six expressers produced FVIII and survived an otherwise lethal tail-clipping, demonstrating phenotypic correction of the bleeding disorder. FVIII expression was sustained for >14 months. Gene transfer occurred into liver, spleen, and lungs with predominant FVIII mRNA expression in the liver. Six of the seven animals with transient or no detectable human FVIII developed FVIII inhibitors (7–350 Bethesda units/ml). These findings indicate that a genetic disease can be corrected by in vivo gene therapy using retroviral vectors