Respiratory infections are one of the major causes of disease in sheep throughout the world. In the beginning of 2008 the Swedish National Veterinary Institute and the Swedish Animal Health Service together started a project about Respiratory infections in Swedish sheep. This study is an initial part of that project and the aim of this study was to investigate different sampling possibilities with focus on nasal swabs. This study is composed partly of a literature review on causative agents of Respiratory infections in sheep and existing sampling methods, and partly of an experimental study comprising 56 sheep. These sheep were sampled with both an ordinary nasal swab and a guarded nasal swab. Before the start of this study there was to our knowledge no described method for sampling sheep with a guarded swab.

The conservation of great apes faces many challenges, one of which is the threat of infectious disease outbreaks. Zoonotic transmission of respiratory diseases from humans to wild great apes has recently been confirmed. Since respiratory disease is one of the major causes of death in both gorillas and chimpanzees, this gives reason for major concern. Little is known about the risks of disease transmission from humans to great apes in natural environments, and there is a need for systematic risk evaluation. Researchers, conservation staff and tourists spend time in very close proximity of wild great apes, sometimes during long time periods, which poses a potential risk of disease spillover. However, the presence of researchers and tourists has been shown to decrease the risk of poaching, making the matter increasingly complex.

Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is an important but unusual cause of chronic respiratory disease of young dogs. The purpuse of this paper is to study and present internationally publicated papers on PCD in dogs and present three dogs, in which PCD was suspected. PCD has been reported in many dog breeds as well as in people. In dogs an humans, PCD is caused by inborn genetical defects which causes structural and functional abnormalities of cilia in the respiratory organs and other cilia in the body. Situs inversus occurs in about half the cases in people and probably in dogs as well. Respiratory signs usually predominate.

The complexity of the mast cell is becoming more prominent. From being the cell recognized just to contribute to allergic inflammation it is now also associated with wound healing, protection against tumor growth and in recognition and defense against a wide range of pathogens. The location of the mast cell in the barrier between the external and internal environment of the body enables the cell to quickly respond to invading bacteria, virus and parasites. Diarrhea due to Escherichia coli infection, listeriosis, toxoplasmosis, Newcastle disease and bovine respiratory syncytial virus are examples of mast cell activating diseases that can affect animals in, as well as outside, the agricultural sector. Additionally, ticks and tick-borne diseases are of concern.

Dysfunction of the upper respiratory tract is a common cause of impaired performance and intolerance to exercise in racehorses and include several upper airway obstructions. The ones termed dynamic obstructions are primarily seen during physical exertion and affected horses often appear to be normal during endoscope examination at rest. The correlation between diagnoses made at rest respectively exercise is low, suggesting that an examination at rest alone is likely to be insufficient. The upper respiratory tract is exposed to great differences in pressure throughout the respiratory cycle; variations that are further altered during strenuous exercise and affect the rigidity of upper airway structures. In presence of great fluctuations in pressure, stability is achieved through coordinated and synchronous neuromuscular mechanisms. Due to nerve damage or anatomical abnormalities, these functions may be disrupted and further cause a dynamic collapse of the upper respiratory tract when pressure changes become too severe. The etiology behind the neuromuscular dysfunction is not yet fully understood.

Nipahvirus is most likely spread from bats to other species and causes lethal encephalitis in humans and respiratory illness in pigs. Different species are affected with varying severity but it seems to have an unprecedented zoonotic capacity and the humans affected either die or receive permanent brain damage. Full recovery is possible but very uncommon. Pigs that live and are bread in the areas that these bats frequent are constantly in danger of contracting pneumonias and meningitis and they can spread the virus further on to the people who work with the pigs and process their carcasses. These workers could then infect other humans in their immediate surroundings, their families for instance.

The purpose of the study was to investigate whether or not Icelandic horses are less severely affected in clinical symptoms of cough or decreased performance than other breeds of horses. A breed variation in chronic respiratory disease severity was suspected based on clinical experience at the Institution for surgery & medicine, large animal, SLU Uppsala. A retrospective journal study of 17 Icelandic horses and 17 Swedish Standardbred horses with chronic problems with cough and/or decreased performance compared several measurements of disease severity. The clinical signs, physical examination and laboratory testing results compared were respiratory rate, abdominal breathing, lung auscultation, endoscopy results, broncho-alveolar lavage (BAL) results and the blood gases pO2 and pCO2. All parameters were available for all 34 individuals except for the blood gases, which were analysed, in only four Icelandic horses and four Swedish Standardbred horses. The only parameters that appeared different between the two groups were respiratory rate and pO2. The four Icelandic horses, which had blood gases analysed, had more severe hypoxemia.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the presence of arterial insufficiency in patients undergoing CABG surgery and whether arterial insufficiency is a risk factor for postoperative wound infections in the harvesting leg. Patients who had CABG surgery were enrolled consecutively. A total of 144 patients participated in the study. During their hospital stay demographic data was recorded, as well as pre-, intra-, and postoperative tests and risk factors. The patients answered a questionnaire regarding postoperative wound infections 30 days after surgery patients answered a questionnaire regarding infections.

ABSTRACT Background: Health and ill-health are multifaceted concepts. Previous research has shown that physical activity and the level of cardio respiratory are important parts of leading a healthy lifestyle. Possibly, it?s so important that the Occupational Health Service should focus even more on this.Aim: The aim was to investigate if there was a relationship between the level of cardio respiratory fitness and self-rated health, and between the level of cardio respiratory fitness and physical and mental ill-health.Method: The study was conducted using a quantitative method in the form of a cross sectional study. Data was collected from an Occupational Health Service, containing answers to a questionnaire on work environment and health and test values ??from completed cycle fitness tests.

Chlamydia is a sexually transmitted infection. The infection rates have increased in the last decade. During 2008 the trend rates declined in all counties and regions in Sweden. Chlamydia infections have a geographical spatial pattern differences. This is seen from the national surveillance data report from the Swedish Institute for infectious disease control (SMI).

About 10 % of the adult women population in Sweden are treated annually for urinary tract infections. The increasing bacterial resistance towards antibiotics is classified by WHO (World Health Organization) and ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) as one of the greatest treats for human health in a global perspective. To find alternatives scientists are studying the possibility to use probiotics to reduce the frequency of recurring urinary tract infections. This literature study examines five randomized double blinded placebo controlled studies where different strains of Lactobacillus have been used as a prophylactic to women suffering from recurrent urinary tract infections and bacterial vaginosis. Overall the studies do not display enough promising results to recommend the use of probiotics as a prophylax or cure..

Tomato production is a common and important agricultural activity in Nicaragua. During the last decades tomato producers have suffered great yield losses due to begomoviruses (family Geminiviridae). The genome of begomoviruses generally consists of two circular ssDNA components, DNA-A and DNA-B. Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) is an example of a begomovirus with only one component. An approach to manage the virus epidemics has been to breed a cultivar with begomovirus resistance genes, which have been transferred from wild tomato.

Every year begomovirus infections cause severe constraints to the tomato production in Nicaragua. Extensive yield losses are followed by large economical losses, both for the country and the single farmer. During recent years the use of begomovirus resistant or tolerant tomato cultivars has increased in Nicaragua as an effort to improve yields. Still, begomovirus infection is a large threat to the tomato production. Therefore, ongoing work in Nicaragua is focusing on finding new, better, begomovirus tolerant or resistant tomato cultivars.

Since long, Sweden has had exceptionally low calf mortality compared to most other countries. The tradition has been to keep calves in individual pens. With increasing number of cows per herd there is now a larger interest in more efficient and economical group systems for housing calves. However it has been noticed that bigger herds have more health problems and higher calf mortality than smaller herds. The early signs of disease are harder to detect when the animals are not fed manually.

The Bovine respiratory syncytial virus (BRSV) causes bronchiolitis and interstitial pneumonia, predominantly in calves, and is a major cause of bovine respiratory disease worldwide. In humans, BRSV is paralleled by the closely related Human respiratory syncytial virus (HRSV), an important cause of respiratory disease, most severe in infants.The clinical signs and pathology during RSV infection is caused, not only by the direct effects of viral replication, but also by the response of the host immune system. The immunopathology of RSV has long obfuscated our understanding of the disease, and development of effective treatment and vaccines will be very difficult until greater knowledge is gained.One of the components of the immune system that has come into focus in RSV research the last few years, is the Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4). The TLR4 receptor is well known as the receptor that binds lipopolysaccaride (LPS), and initiates the host response to bacterial infection. Recently, it has been shown that the fusion protein of RSV also interacts with, and up-regulates the expression of, the TLR4 receptor.