A. T. Nishiya

Environmental risk factors related to the development of canine non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

This research aimed to investigate the possible risk factors associated with the development of canine non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Owners of 83 dogs with non-Hodgkins lymphoma and of 84 healthy dogs answered an epidemiological questionnaire. Dogs who lived outside of the house and within 100 meters of busy streets or avenues (defined as more than 50 vehicles per minute) had a higher risk for developing the disease (OR: 3.1, 95% CI: 1.4-6.9, P=0.005). These results suggest that air pollution derived from vehicle traffic may be associated with the development of canine non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Apoptotic intrinsic pathway proteins predict survival in canine cutaneous mast cell tumours: BARRAet al.

Mast cell tumours (MCTs) are the most frequent canine round cell neoplasms and show variable biological behaviours with high metastatic and recurrence rates. The disease is treated surgically and wide margins are recommended. Adjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy used in this disease cause DNA damage in neoplastic cells, which is aimed to induce apoptotic cell death. Resisting cell death is a hallmark of cancer, which contributes to the development and progression of tumours. The aim of this study was to investigate the expression of the proteins involved in the apoptotic intrinsic pathway and to evaluate their potential use as prognostic markers for canine cutaneous MCTs. Immunohistochemistry for BAX, BCL2, APAF1, Caspase-9, and Caspase-3 was performed in 50 canine cases of MCTs. High BAX expression was associated with higher mortality rate and shorter survival. BCL2 and APAF1 expressions offered additional prognostic information to the histopathological grading systems. The present results indicate that variations in the expression of apoptotic proteins are related to malignancy of cutaneous MCTs in dogs.

Domestic animals as sentinels for environmental carcinogenic agents

The idea of using animals as sentinels of environmental contaminations is not new, but until now is relatively little explored. The aim of this talk is to present evidences that lymphomas in dogs of the city of Sao Paulo may be associated to exposure to air pollution caused by vehicle emissions and heavy traffic, and that the spatial distribution of canine lymphomas in the city of Sao Paulo coincides with the spatial distribution of human lymphomas in the same city. Lymphomas are highly prevalent malignant neoplasms that affect canines, humans and other species. Several reports state that, besides a genetic breed susceptibility, environmental factors may be associated to the development of these neoplasms. One first study aimed to investigate the possible factors associated with the development of canine lymphomas. The owners of 83 dogs with lymphomas and 84 controls were interviewed through an epidemiological questionnaire. Cases and control animals lived in the same geographical areas and were admitted to the same veterinary hospitals (five locations in total), in the city of Sao Paulo. The results showed that age, gender, breed, diet, reproductive status, mineral or tap water, exposures as passive smoking, herbicides, insecticides, fungicide, building materials, products for home maintenance and other factors were unrelated to the risk of malignant lymphoma. Interestingly, our study detected that dogs which were permanently kept outdoors and around 100 meters to busy streets or avenues (more than 50 vehicles per minute) had a higher risk for development of the disease. The city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, is the largest city in South America and the fourth largest city in the world housing a fleet of about five million cars and a million motorcycles. These results suggest that environmental factors, such as the air pollution caused by the heavy traffic, may be associated to the development of canine lymphomas. A second study has been performed in order to verify and compare the spatial distribution of canine and human lymphomas in the city of Sao Paulo. Non-Hodgkin`s lymphomas (NHLs) are complex and heterogeneous neoplasms characterized by malignant proliferation of lymphoid cells. Human and canine NHLs share several features. Because dogs share most environmental and living conditions with humans, we reasoned that spatial distributions of NHL cases between the two species would provide some evidence for the role of certain environmental factors, such as pollutants, in the pathogenesis of NHLs. In this study, we retrospectively analyzed the spatial distributions of 630 human NHL cases randomly selected from a database of more than 8.000 cases at the Cancer Registry of Sao Paulo and 579 canine NHL cases diagnosed in five referral veterinary hospitals in the city. All human and canine cases were recorded between 1996 and 2006. Here we show that human and canine cases of NHL have similar spatial distributions in the city of Sao Paulo, with a high incidence in the central region, which is the most polluted area of the city, due to the presence of avenues with a heavy traffic of vehicles. These results suggest that environmental pollutants may play a role in the pathogenesis of human and canine NHLs. In conclusion, the results of these two studies have suggested that canine lymphomas, and possibly human lymphomas, may be associated with the exposure to air pollution. Other studies are being conducted to better establish the relationship between air pollution and development of human and canine lymphomas. Fortunately, the government of the state of Sao Paulo is aware of the deleterious effects of air pollution on human health and is taking measures to better control the levels of air pollution in the city. * Correspondence: mlzdagli@yahoo.com.br School of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science of the University of Sao Paulo, USP, Sao Paulo, Brazil Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Kimura et al. BMC Proceedings 2013, 7(Suppl 2):K13 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1753-6561/7/S2/K13

Survival study of 86 bitches with mammary tumors treated at the Veterinary Hospital of the University Anhembi Morumbi, São Paulo, Brazil

Results Among the 154 tumors analyzed, 149 (96.7%) were neoplasms (benign and malignant) and 5 (3.3%) were nonneoplastic lesions. For statistical analysis, mongrel (30.2%) and Poodles (26.7%) were a lot more affected breeds, age between 9 and 12 years (62.8%) was the most frequent of all, 60,4% (90/149) of neoplastic formations were benign and 39,6% (59/149) were malignant. 24,4% (12/49) of all malignant tumors patients had metastasis. Dogs whose tumors were less than 4 cm had no significantly increased duration of survival with a median of 15,3 month versus 17,4 months for dogs with tumors greater than 4 centimeters (p=0,327). Dogs with metastasis lived a median of 10,7 months versus 18,3 months for dogs without them (p<0,01). Patients treated with surgery had 17,3 months of median survival rate versus surgery plus chemotherapy submitted dogs had 13,8 months (p=0,319). Dogs with malignant tumors in stage I, II, III, IV and V had, respectively, 21, 18,4 , 14,9 , 17,2 and 8,8 months of survival (p<0,01).

Evaluation of different methods to obtain primary mammary epithelial cell cultures from canine spontaneous mammary gland tumors

Background Mammary gland neoplasms are the most prevalent tumors in dogs, and their treatment is still challenging. A crucial problem in the handling of this type of neoplasm is to obtain primary mammary epithelial cell cultures from the original tumors. The aim of this study was to determine the best conditions to culture primary mammary epithelial cells from several histological types of canine breast tumors.