Secretary of Agriculture Highlights Proposed $42 6 Million Investment in Animal Health, Food Security pa.gov - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from pa.gov Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Horsetalk.co.nz New test can identify gene doping in horses
Researchers have developed a test to identify gene doping in horses.
The test, created by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, can detect the local administration of illicit, gene doping therapies in equine athletes.
Gene doping agents, unlike other small-molecule pharmaceuticals, trigger cells to produce performance-enhancing proteins.
These proteins, which often are more elusive because of their virtually indistinguishable characteristics from naturally occurring proteins within the body, can make it more difficult to determine whether an animal or human has had gene therapy administered.
The new test is described as a significant breakthrough in the collective fight to advance the welfare and integrity of sport for both horses and humans.
The study, published on the preprint server bioRxiv , highlights the need to study viral evolution and pathogenesis in human and animal hosts. This could help prevent future outbreaks that may mimic the magnitude of the current COVID-19 pandemic.
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A newly published, “catalog” of equine discomfort behaviors could help veterinarians, researchers, stable managers, and owners “speak the same language” when it comes to recognizing possible signs of discomfort in horses, according to researchers in the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine.
Based on 35 years’ worth of observations of thousands of horses going through various states of health-related comfort and discomfort, the new ethogram with more than 70 entries is a veritable “dictionary of discomfort in horses,” said Sue McDonnell, PhD, an equine behavior specialist at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center, in Kennett Square.
“What sorts of things do horses do when they’re uncomfortable?” she said. “That’s what we aimed to define in a more or less complete inventory list, to make sure people really understand these discomfort behaviors.”
Penn Vet Researchers Develop Test to Detect Gene Doping bloodhorse.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bloodhorse.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.