Molecular techniques that detect canine lymphoma cells by their clonal antigen receptor gene rearrangement play an increasing role for diagnosis as well as for monitoring minimal residual disease during and after cytostatic therapy. However, the methods currently available are time-consuming and/or cost-intensive thus impeding the use in clinical routine. The aim of the present study was to develop and evaluate a real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with subsequent melting curve analysis (MCA) for the detection of clonally rearranged antigen receptor genes in dogs with B and T cell lymphoma on non formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded lymph node samples.

Veterinary Research, a journal on Animal Infection

The most important disease of dairy cattle is mastitis, caused by the infection of the mammary gland by various micro-organisms. Although the transcriptional response of bovine mammary gland cells to in vitro infection has been studied, the interplay and consequences of these responses in the in vivo environment of the mammary gland are less clear. Previously mammary gland quarters were considered to be unaffected by events occurring in neighbouring quarters. More recently infection of individual quarters with mastitis causing pathogens, especially Escherichia coli, has been shown to influence the physiology of neighbouring uninfected quarters. Therefore, the transcriptional responses of uninfected mammary gland quarters adjacent to quarters infected with two major mastitis causing pathogens, E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus, were compared.

Murine and human peripheral blood monocytes are heterogeneous in size, granularity, nuclear morphology, phenotype and function. Whether and how bovine blood monocytes follow this pattern was analyzed in this study. Flow cytometrically, classical monocytes (cM) CD14⁺ CD16⁻, intermediate monocytes (intM) CD14⁺ CD16⁺ and nonclassical monocytes (ncM) CD14⁺ CD16⁺ were identified, with cM being the predominant subset (89%). cM showed a significant lower expression of CD172a, intM expressed the highest level of MHC class II molecules, and ncM were low positive for CD163. Compared to cM and intM, ncM showed a significantly reduced phagocytosis capacity, a significantly reduced generation of reactive oxygen species, and reduced mRNA expression of CXCL8, CXCL1 and IL-1β after LPS stimulation. Based on IL-1β secretion after LPS/ATP stimulation, the inflammasome could be activated in cM and intM, but not in ncM. IFNγ increased the expression of CD16 selectively on cM and induced a shift from cM into intM in vitro. In summary, bovine CD172a-positive mononuclear cells define three monocyte subsets with distinct phenotypic and functional differences. Bovine cM and intM share homologies with their human counterparts, whereas bovine ncM are not inflammatory monocytes.