David G. Baker Division of Laboratory Animal Medicine School of Veterinary Medicine Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, Louisiana ASM Press, Washington, D.C. 2003 PREFACE "Laboratory animals often serve as the essential building blocks with which advances in biomedical research are made. During the last century, it became obvious to many that the validity and value of research findings derived from the use of animals were directly dependent upon their physiologic health and uniformity. Considerable resources were thus devoted to improving and standardizing the health and care of laboratory animals, with tremendous results. The improvements continue to this day. While these improvements are most evident for laboratory rodents, new approaches to animal husbandry developed for these species have to some extent benefited larger species as well. In addition to environmental, nutritional, genetic, and social influences, pathogen status has emerged as an important influence on host physiology. Improvements in animal husbandry and care have greatly reduced the number and scope of pathogens found in the modern laboratory animal facility. For example, pathogens requiring multiple hosts for the completion of life cycles have been eradicated as modern housing systems and commercial diets greatly limit the availability of unwanted host species. Likewise, those pathogens causing overt clinical disease drew the most attention and so were largely eliminated. Yet we are left with those natural pathogens of laboratory animals that are directly transmitted from host to host and that, for the most part, cause few if any clinical signs in otherwise healthy animals. So why worry about these? The purpose of this book is to inform laboratory animal veterinarians, animal caretakers, research scientists, and others about how natural pathogens of laboratory animals can and do alter host physiology and, in so doing, compromise research findings. The text opens with a historical perspective on changes in the general awareness of laboratory animal pathogens. Next follows an overview of the important distinction between infection and disease. The first formal chapter provides brief descriptions of housing systems for pathogen exclusion or containment and then a brief description of approaches to pathogen surveillance. The body of the text includes sequential chapters on the natural pathogens of rats and mice, gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, ferrets, cats, dogs, swine, and nonhuman primates. For each pathogen, there is a description of the agent, epidemiology, clinical signs, pathology, interference with research, and methods of diagnosis and control. Each description concludes with a convenient table indicating the organ systems affected by each pathogen and, finally, a reference list." ISBN: 155581266X (hardcover) $119.95 USD WHERE TO ORDER: ASM Press (American Society for Microbiology) P.O. Box 605 Herndon, VA 20172 USA Phone: (800) 546-2416 - US and Canada Phone: (703) 661-1593 - all other areas Fax: (703) 661-1501 Email: asmmail@presswarehouse.com Website: www.asmpress.org Posted Date: 8/18/2003
URL: http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/review/naturalpath.html
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