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The Effects Of Blood Analysis On Veterinary Practice

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Blood analysis in veterinary practice is a valuable testing to address diagnosis of a large number of conditions in farm and companion animals. Combined with the history, records and clinical examination of patients, it provides useful information to formulate a clinical suspicion and it may sometimes offer precise clues of specific disease or its nature. For example, changes in the number and morphology of red blood cells count might aid in the diagnosis of different types of anemia, whereas modification of white blood cells count may support the presence of acute or chronic inflammation or infection or of immunoproliferative disorders. Alongside of traditional hematologic analyses, considerable progress has been made in the understanding …show more content…

The systemic response results in a variety of pathophysiolocigal changes aimed at repairing the injury (Whicher and Westacott, 1992), and it is accompanied by the hepatic synthesis and release of several plasma proteins, known as acute phase proteins (APP) (Baumann and Gauldie, 1990), which initiate the anti-inflammatory process through a wide range of biological functions. The pattern of responding APP varies between animal species, and they are classified as major, moderate, minor and negative APP based on their increase in plasma (Murata et al., 2004). Positive associations have been established between circulating concentrations of specific APP and the extent of particular disorders in different species, which support their potential use as health markers in animals. Nevertheless, they act as non-specific markers, as they do not clarify the etiology of disease (Petersen et al., 2004) but are able to disclose the presence of inflammatory lesions, whether they are primary or secondary to other disorders (Eckersall, 1995).
Current research has shown that the potential of APP analysis encompasses also a large variety of non-inflammatory conditions, such as metabolic and endocrine disorders (Eckersall, 2003; Nakagawa et al., 1997), stress (Alsemgeest et al., 1995), pregnancy and parturition (Uchida et al., 1993; Vannucchi et al., 2002).
With regard to the public health perspective, determination of APP has a wide range of implications in

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