The aim of the study was to demonstrate differences in the gene expression of signalling pathways between healthy dogs and dogs with chronic mitral valve disease in different heart failure groups. Blood samples were collected from 49 dogs of various breeds between 1.4 and 15.2 years of age. Isolated RNA samples were analysed for quality and integrity and the gene expression profile was determined. The study demonstrated that nucleated cells from peripheral blood can be used to assess the status of heart failure in dogs. Furthermore, significant differences in the expression of the genes were noticed between healthy dogs and dogs with clinical signs of chronic mitral valve disease. This is a preliminary non-invasive study showing the feasibility of genetic testing from peripheral blood nucleated cells, which at the same time has made it possible to set the future directions of genetic studies in clinical cases of canine chronic mitral valve disease.
Background The eye chambers constitute an immunologically privileged compartment. The presence of CD4+ and CD8+ cells in the chambers of normal and cataract eyes is a research problem that so far has been explored only fragmentarily. The first aim of our research was to determine whether CD4+ and CD8+ cells are present in the normal chambers of the eye in dogs, and if so, what the relative and absolute counts of these cells are. Another objective was to verify the hypothesis that uncomplicated cataract may be associated with the local recruitment of CD4+ and CD8+ cells.Results The presence of CD4+ and CD8+ cells was detected in aqueous humor (AH) samples of normal and cataract eyes. However, on average only 55 and 236 events for combined subsets of CD4+ and CD8+ cells were collected for the entire volume of AH from normal and cataract eyes, respectively. The statistical analysis did not reveal significant differences in the percentage and absolute number of CD4+ cells between normal and cataract eyes. However, the values of these parameters in AH samples from cataract eyes were approximately 2- and 3-fold higher than in normal eyes, respectively. The mean percentage and absolute count of CD8+ cells increased approximately by 2.7- and 6-fold, respectively, in AH samples from cataract eyes compared to normal ones. The absolute count, but not the percentage, of CD4+ and CD8+ cells in AH of uveitic eyes was approximately 5- and 3-fold higher than in cataract eyes.Conclusions The results indicate that CD4+ and CD8+ cells occur constitutively in the normal chambers of the eye in dogs. However, considering the extremely low abundance of these cells, it needs to be concluded that both of these cell populations appeared in trace amounts. The development of uncomplicated cataract in dogs may not be immunologically neutral in terms of the local immune response, but it may be associated with the recruitment of CD8+ cells into the eye chambers. This event does not seem to be of an inflammatory nature because it appears on a scale a few times smaller than in the course of uveitis.
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