The Lawrence Jacobsen Library
Books Received (Primate-Science/PrimateLit)

NATURAL PATHOGENS OF LABORATORY ANIMALS: THEIR EFFECT ON RESEARCH

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

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