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ARS Home » Plains Area » College Station, Texas » Southern Plains Agricultural Research Center » Food and Feed Safety Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #303519

Title: Perspectives and research challenges in veterinary infectious diseases

Author
item Kogut, Michael - Mike

Submitted to: Frontiers in Veterinary Infectious Diseases
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/26/2014
Publication Date: 10/22/2014
Publication URL: http://handle.nal.usda.gov/10113/61148
Citation: Kogut, M.H. 2014. Perspectives and research challenges in veterinary infectious diseases. Frontiers in Veterinary Infectious Diseases. 1:Article 21.

Interpretive Summary: There are many ingredients of chicken feed that can potentially help the bird’s immune system fight off infectious germs. However, there have not been very good scientific experiments conducted to prove this idea. This paper suggests ways that scientists that study chicken feeds, chicken immunity, and infectious germs of chickens can work together to do experiments that will show how that chicken feed can make chickens healthier. This paper would be beneficial to chicken feed makers, chicken farmers, and nutritionists and will help make cheaper, but better chicken feeds.

Technical Abstract: The Veterinary Infectious Disease specialty section seeks to become an outlet for veterinary research into infectious diseases through the study of the pathogen or its host or the host's environment or by addressing combinations of these aspects of the disease system. We vision research in this area will exploit the very latest technologies to improve our understanding of the host-pathogen interface or its relationship with the host animal's environment. The immune response and nutrient metabolism are two fundamental biological systems indispensable to maintaining and preserving life. Each of these systems is capable of modulating the activity of the other to ensure that the host animal is capable of coordinating the appropriate responses under any conditions. Thus, metabolic systems are integrated with pathogen-sensing and immune responses, and these pathways are evolutionarily conserved, yet we know very little about the effect of infections on host metabolism. Several important networks sense and manage nutrients and integrate with immune and inflammatory pathways to influence the physiological and pathological metabolic states. For example, the Toll-like receptors, a family of the innate sensors, recognize specific microbial components, but can also sense nutritional signals such as elevated glucose levels and saturated fatty acids. Likewise, metabolism-signaling pathways, such as leptin and other hormones, can also regulate immune functions. Thus, any immune alteration, specifically inflammation, can cause disturbances in host metabolism. New insights into infectious disease pathogenesis and animal production that can result in the discovery of novel diagnostic approaches and/or therapeutics is of high priority for the journal.