botulism is a zoonotic disease which has a worldwide distribution . the source of infection in livestock is usually carcasses of birds, domestic and wild animals . rotten carcasses of animals are contaminated by clostridium botulinum .the toxin of this bacteria leads to a fatal paralytic disease . this paper reports an outbreak of domestic animal botulism in the villages of bushehr province in ...

The objective of our study was to determine the genetic influence on blood pressure in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR), and normotensive Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats using genetic crosses. Blood pressure was measured by tail sphygmomanometry from 8 to 20 weeks of age. Blood pressure was significantly higher from 12 to 20 weeks in the male offspring derived from WKY mothers x SHR fathers as com...

We investigated the involvement of loci on the sex chromosomes in the hypertension of the spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) by studying male F1 and F2 generation rats derived from reciprocal crosses of SHR with Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats (cross 1: WKY female x SHR male; cross 2: SHR female x WKY male). At 16 weeks of age there was no significant difference in the blood pressures of F1 animals d...

Introduction: Intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) injection of streptozotocin (STZ) to rodents has been reported as an appropriate model for sporadic dementia of Alzheimer's type (SDAT), characterized by a progressive impairment of memory. However, very little or nothing is known about non-cognitive behavioral effects in the STZ model. This study was carried out in order to show the protective eff...

C(3)H/He mice were exposed to total-body X-irradiation of 1000 roentgens and received thereafter 10(7) xenogeneic Wistar rat marrow cells intravenously. In these rat-to-mouse chimeras, serum interferon-producing capacity upon injection of Newcastle disease virus was examined four weeks after grafting. Normal levels of circulating interferon were produced. The interferon, however, had the specie...

BACKGROUND Landscape may affect the distribution of infectious diseases by influencing the population density and dispersal of hosts and vectors. Plague (Yersinia pestis infection) is a highly virulent, re-emerging disease, the ecology of which has been scarcely studied in Africa. Human seroprevalence data for the major plague focus of Madagascar suggest that plague spreads heterogeneously acro...

Introduction: Although aging is the most important risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD), there is evidence indicating that neuroinflammation may contribute to the development and progression of the disease. Several studies indicated that minocycline may exert neuroprotective effects in rodent models of neurodegenerative diseases. Nevertheless, there are also other studies implying that ...

The Rat Genome Database (RGD, http://rgd.mcw.edu) is an NIH-funded project whose stated mission is 'to collect, consolidate and integrate data generated from ongoing rat genetic and genomic research efforts and make these data widely available to the scientific community'. In a collaboration between the Bioinformatics Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin, the Jackson Laboratory a...

Future prospects continue to be strong for research using the rat as a model organism. New technology has enabled the proliferation of many new transgenic and knockout rat strains, the genomes of more than 40 rat strains have been sequenced, publications using the rat as a model continue to be produced at a steady rate, and discoveries of disease-associated genes and mechanisms from rat experim...

Many lines of evidence demonstrate that genetic variability contributes to chronic kidney disease susceptibility in humans as well as rodent models. Little progress has been made in discovering causal kidney disease genes in humans mainly due to genetic complexity. Here, we use a minimal congenic mapping strategy in the FHH (fawn hooded hypertensive) rat to identify Sorcs1 as a novel renal dise...