UF Health Podcasts

Advanced diagnostic imaging tools can be life-saving for large and small animals. Expertise in this key area of veterinary medicine is critical for both pinpointing diseases and guiding the treatment process.

On this show, Dr. Federico Vilaplana Grosso, a clinical associate professor and diagnostic imaging specialist, will discuss some of the tools used most frequently these days in veterinary medicine to diagnose diseases. He’ll also discuss how veterinary specialists can supplement what general practitioners are able to do when the need for diagnostic images arises, and how technology has evolved to enable the veterinary care team to obtain faster and ever more accurate diagnoses in order to ensure the best possible outcome for your pet or horse.

There’s nothing quite like slipping into our ugliest, most comfortable sweatpants and settling in to binge a new TV show while snacking on the tastiest-but-unhealthiest foods possible.

But let’s face it, as fun as it can be, eating refined carbohydrates, high-fat foods and sugary snacks can result in becoming overweight and having poor physical health, in general.

If that’s not enough motivation to jettison the junk food, new research from Australia highlights how fatty, sugary diets can also negatively affect our cognitive ability.

That’s right, those sweet snacks and saturated fats aren’t just adding inches to waistlines, they’re bringing down our brains as well.

The new study focused on spatial navigation, or learning and remembering how to get from one location to another, which is known to approximate the health of the brain’s hippocampus [hip-puh-KAM-pus].

Participants were tasked with successfully navigating a virtual reality maze six times to find a treasure chest. The treasure chest was then removed, and participants were asked to locate where the chest had been in earlier rounds.

Researchers found that those whose diets included less fat and sugar were able to more accurately pinpoint where the treasure chest had been.

While the evidence is clear, the researchers said the good news is that brain health can easily be improved by altering one’s diet, which can in turn improve the health of the hippocampus.

Americans have access to more high-fat and sugary snacks than ever before, but exercising a little self-control can go a long way, especially for our spatial navigation skills.

How else will we find our way to the pantry?

Lots of studies have looked at how mom’s mood can affect childhood behavior and development, but what about Dad?

A new study suggests paternal depression during a child’s first year of school can significantly impact their behavior and social skills down the road.

Researchers from Rutgers University studied data from more than 1,400 children who were part of a national cohort of births from various U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000. Most of the children’s mothers were unmarried.

The researchers assessed fathers’ depression when the children were 5 years old and entering kindergarten, using a screening tool from the World Health Organization.

When the children reached 9 years old, their teachers assessed their behavior using two scales that measured hyperactivity, cooperation, self-control and other behaviors.

The results showed that children whose fathers had been depressed had significantly more behavioral problems than those whose fathers were not. The children with depressed fathers had 25% higher ADHD scores, 37% higher hyperactivity scores and 36% higher rates of oppositional behavior — behavior characterized by hostility and defiance toward authority figures.

These children also had 11% lower scores in social skills, and they continued to have behavioral struggles through fourth grade. What’s more, these results held even after the researchers adjusted for maternal depression and other child and family characteristics.

Raising perfect, socially adept kids can be difficult, but supporting dad’s mental health is one way for parents to support their child’s social and academic success for years to come.

NEADS Service Dogs receive a unique form of training. After early socialization, each 12-week-old pup is assigned to live with a handler in the Prison PUP Program — that is, with an incarcerated person who has met strict behavioral criteria and commits to the 12- to 18-month training program.

Each pup accompanies their handler everywhere — to obedience classes, grooming sessions and dining halls — and they sleep in their handler’s dormitory-style room. On weekends, outside volunteers take the dogs home and introduce them to the wider world.

It’s a win-win-win situation. The dogs receive excellent care, and disabled people adopt well-trained companions. As for the incarcerated handlers, experiencing the unconditional love of a dog is often life-changing.

You can learn more about the program at www.neads.org.

As we ease into summer, it’s time to take stock of pet hazards that come with the season.

Of course, there’s the danger of heat in closed cars — even with a window or two left open — so don’t leave pets unattended. And while in cars or trucks, always secure a pet passenger in a crate or a well-fitting harness. Also, never let them ride in the bed of a pickup truck or stick their head out the window of a moving vehicle.

Back home, make sure to install secure, intact screens in all windows to prevent life-threatening falls. And while doing home improvement or gardening, keep toxic products away from inquisitive paws and tongues. Also steer clear of toxic plants, like lilies, rhododendrons and azaleas.

There are more ways to keep summer safe for pets, but these few tips are a good start.

Bird migration is a monumental and mysterious process — especially given that most birds fly solo and overnight.

Migration behavior varies across bird species, and it’s presumed to be at least partly inherited. The Earth’s magnetic field is thought to be another factor that helps birds migrate so precisely.

Amazingly, quantum mechanics may play a role too. Simply put, unpaired electrons, or free radicals, in cells have a property called “spin,” which is especially sensitive to magnetic fields. Light is one way to stimulate free radical production, and a protein called cryptochrome 4 is important as well. That protein is higher in migrating versus nonmigrating birds.

It’s all too complex to fully cover here, but it sure gives the term “bird brain” a whole new meaning.

Summer means mosquitoes, and that can signal problems for pets in the form of heartworm disease. Even if you don’t live in a high-risk area, heartworm disease has been diagnosed in all 50 states.

You may travel with your pet to a locale that has a higher incidence of heartworm disease than your own — or the disease may land on your doorstep when heartworm-positive pets are adopted from elsewhere.

Stray dogs and wildlife — like coyotes, foxes and wolves — may be heartworm-positive too. Infected mosquitos can even be blown by the wind from other areas.

Because risk factors for heartworm disease are so difficult to predict, it’s best to get your pet tested yearly for heartworm and keep them on heartworm prevention throughout the year.

A group of international researchers has recently identified a genetic mutation associated with progressive retinal atrophy, or PRA, a disease that can cause blindness in Labrador retrievers.

Three littermates with PRA were brought to the attention of the researchers by a foundation that breeds service dogs for visually impaired individuals. The researchers identified a genetic mutation in the three affected dogs that wasn’t found in the general U.S. population of Labrador retrievers. They also found 19 Labrador retrievers from the same kennel that carried the gene but were clinically unaffected.

Now that a gene has been identified, the goal is to develop a diagnostic test to help prevent genetic carriers from being used in breeding.

Felycin-CA1 [fel-i-sin C-A-1], or sirolimus [si-ro·-li-​mus] delayed release tablets, recently received conditional approval for the management of ventricular hypertrophy [high-PER-trō-fee] in cats with subclinical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM.

Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle, and HCM causes thickening of the heart’s left ventricle — that’s the lower left chamber of the heart, which pumps blood out to most of the body. HCM is a progressive disease that’s one of the most common causes of feline deaths. Cats with subclinical disease have thickening of the left ventricle but are not showing clinical signs.

Conditional approval may be granted if a drug addresses a serious or life-threatening disease and clinical trials would be especially difficult to implement.

Felycin-CA1 [fel-i-sin C-A-1] is only available by prescription from a veterinarian.

When you find a munched-on pair of shoes, does it make you wonder why dogs have the urge to chew?

Wild dogs stay nourished by chewing carcasses, nuts, berries and bugs. But chewing also confers other physical, psychological and emotional benefits.

The abrasive action of chewing is beneficial for a dog’s dental health, while between-meal chewing can aid digestion and help maintain a healthy gut microbial population.

Chewing also has the ability to both stimulate a bored dog and calm an anxious pooch. Chewing even helps maintain cognitive function in our dogs as they’re living longer.

You can embrace your pup’s penchant for chewing by providing canine-safe, chewable objects. Ask your veterinarian for tips.