Background: Urea nitrogen/creatinine ratio (UCR) is a marker for upper gastrointestinal bleeding (GIB) in people.Objectives: To assess the usefulness of UCR to predict occult GIB and distinguish upper from lower GIB in dogs.Animals: Eighty-nine dogs with GIB and 65 clinically healthy dogs. Dogs were grouped according to 65 overt GIB and 24 occult GIB, and based on lesion localization (37 upper, 13 lower, and 8 both).Methods: Seventy-four dogs were included retrospectively and 15 dogs prospectively. Serum urea nitrogen and creatinine concentrations, UCR, hemoglobin concentration, hematocrit, mean corpuscular volume, and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration were compared between groups. Logistic regression models were fitted to assess if variables could distinguish occult GIB from being healthy and upper from lower GIB.

Abstract. Haptoglobin is a positive moderate acute phase protein (APP) in cats. Measurement of haptoglobin can be used in the diagnosis, prognosis, and monitoring of systemic inflammatory disease, especially by creating profiles with major APPs. The aim of our study was to validate a sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for measurement of feline haptoglobin. The validation included an assessment of precision, accuracy, detection limit, method comparison with a spectrophotometric assay, and evaluation of the overlap performance. The concentration of haptoglobin was measured in serum from 27 healthy and 23 sick cats. The coefficients of variation were 2.5-4.7% for intra-assay variability and 7.1-11.6% for interassay variability. The ratio of observed to expected dilutional parallelism of 4 serum samples was 108.1-118.4%. The ratio of observed to expected spike recovery of 4 serum samples was 90.8-94.0%. The lower detection limit was 0.19 g/L. Method comparison revealed a positive correlation (r s = 0.949, P < 0.0001) and a proportional bias between the methods of −38.9%. Agreement between the methods was not clinically acceptable. Overlap performance of the ELISA was deemed satisfactory. The sandwich ELISA measures feline haptoglobin with an analytical and overlap performance acceptable for clinical purposes. Given the observed bias, the ELISA cannot be used interchangeably with the spectrophotometric assay.

No abstract

Background: Prospective studies describing video capsule endoscopy (VCE), its feasibility, and complications in dogs are limited.Objective: To assess VCE, quality of visualization, complications, and risk factors for incomplete studies in dogs with overt or questionable gastrointestinal bleeding (GIB).