BATON ROUGE - The LSU AgCenter equine specialist is advising horse owners to protect their animals against diseases spread by mosquitoes that are becoming more active with the warmer weather. Two mosquito-borne diseases West Nile virus and eastern equine encephalomyelitis are prevalent in Louisiana and can cause death in horses. Last year, 63 cases of West Nile virus were reported and eight cases of eastern equine encephalomyelitis were reported across Louisiana. The majority of these cases could have been prevented with vaccination, said Neely Walker. This years first case of West Nile virus in Louisiana was detected in a bird found in Lafayette earlier this month, she said. Both diseases can cause infection of the brain and spinal cord or their protective covering. While each disease is caused by a specific virus, they are both transmitted to horses by being bitten by an infected mosquito, Walker said. Horses are considered to be a dead-end host for both diseases, meaning that the virus is not directly contagious from horse to horse. Horses infected with West Nile virus may have a loss of appetite, depression, fever, weakness or paralysis of the hind limbs, muscle fasciculation or muzzle twitching, impaired vision, ataxia (incoordination), … Continue reading →

nanomedicine edit1 By: Daniel Pratt … Continue reading →

Nanomedicine could one day provide a wide range of treatments, but possible toxicological effects from nanoparticles are still a cause of considerable concern. Studies have shown that nanoparticles tend to accumulate in the liver and spleen, but until now there have been limited ways to monitor the exposure of these organs without taking a sample from the tissue itself which could be fatal. Now, researchers at the University of Toronto have demonstrated that a glance at the skin can reveal the level of nanoparticle exposure and that measuring nanoparticle content in a skin sample can quantitatively indicate the concentration within internal organs. "The skin of mice injected with high doses of gold nanoparticles turned blue," explains Warren Chan from the University of Toronto and team leader in the research project. "We've been working on nanoparticles for 15 years and never seen skin colour changing, but then before we never injected at such high doses." He tells nanotechweb.org that these higher dosage studies were prompted by the suggestion that nanoparticle toxicity is probably linked to dosage. "Now we've proved that the concentration of nanoparticles in the skin is linked to concentrations in other organs and that there is a direct correlation," … Continue reading →