Change way we test and house cattle to control bovine TB, says new research

Cattle testing, not badger culling will beat TB say researchers

According to new research, the culling of badgers will potentially reduce the number of Bovine TB infected cattle by just 12 out of a herd of 15,000.

However, reducing the interval between TB tests on cattle by one month could reduce the number of sick cattle by 193.

The Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) research found that regular and frequent testing of cattle could eventually lead to the eradication of the disease, whether or not badgers were culled, and despite the current test being at most 80 per cent accurate.

Badger culling alone, however, did not lead to TB eradication in the study and is therefore thought unlikely to be a successful control strategy.

The model also suggested that housing cattle in large sheds over winter could potentially double the number of infected animals in a herd, because under such conditions there is a much greater chance of TB being passed between cows.

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Better Housing Conditions for Zebrafish Could Improve Research Results

ScienceDaily (May 3, 2012) — Changing the conditions that zebrafish are kept in could have an impact on their behaviour in animal studies and the reliability of results, according to scientists from Queen Mary, University of London.

Zebrafish, like rats and mice, are often used by neuroscientists to explore mechanisms controlling behaviour and in the search for new compounds to treat behavioural disease such as addiction, attention deficit disorders or autism.

It is known that housing and handling affects the results of behavioural studies done in rats and mice, but until now there have been few studies of how the environment the fish are kept in before they are tested can impact on the results.

Writing in the journal PLoS One, Dr Caroline Brennan from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences explains: "Practical considerations make zebrafish a very useful species in which to explore mechanisms controlling behaviour. Their small size (less than 2 cm) and prolific breeding (approx. 300 eggs per pairing) makes it easy and cheap to keep large numbers of zebrafish in a small space. It is also relatively easy to change the zebrafish genome to explore how changes in different genes affect behaviour.

"As fish have many proteins and brain circuits in common with humans, factors that affect the fish behaviour can tell us about things that may affect human behaviour."

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120503120500.htm