A 4-year-old neutered female domestic shorthair cat weighing 5.1 kg was referred to Jeju National University Hospital with acute onset respiratory distress, weakness, and anorexia. The patient had a history of stressful antecedent events that involved bullying by a newly introduced cat. Thoracic radiography and echocardiography revealed a stage C hypertrophic cardiomyopathy phenotype based on the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine classification system with pulmonary edema, pleural effusion, and pericardial effusion at the same time. The patient was treated with furosemide, pimobendan, and rivaroxaban. Pericardiocentesis was performed because pericardial effusion was identified. Reevaluation after 30 days revealed a normal respiratory rate on physical examination, normal cardiac shape on thoracic radiographs, and normal cardiac measurements on echocardiography. The patient was tentatively diagnosed with transient myocardial thickening (TMT) and all medications were discontinued. Six months after the initial hospitalization, the cat continued to do well without any clinical signs or left ventricular wall thickening. This case is the first report describing feline TMT in Korea. Moreover, it involves a rare case in which pulmonary edema, pleural effusion, and pericardial effusion, which induce cardiac tamponade, occurred simultaneously due to TMT-related congestive heart failure.

An adult castrated male dog was presented with persistent hematochezia. Digital rectal examination and endoscopy found multiple colorectal masses. Complete blood count and serum biochemical results were within the reference interval. Fine needle aspirate of the masses indicated a diagnosis of inflamed polyps with a primary differential of malignancy. Histopathologic examination using endoscopy-guided incisional biopsy of the masses revealed an inflamed neoplasm with ossification. A colectomy was performed to remove the tumor. Subsequent histopathologic examination of the surgically resected masses resulted in a diagnosis of colorectal carcinoma in situ (CiS) with immune infiltrates, which were subject to immunohistochemical and flow cytometric immunophenotyping. The immunohistochemistry confirmed intraepithelial CD3 + T cells within CiS. The flow cytometric analysis indicated tumor-infiltrating CD4 + T, CD8 + T, and CD11b + myeloid subsets. The flow cytometric analysis of circulating and tumor-infiltrating leukocytes demonstrated a preferential expansion of CD25 + FOXP3 + regulatory T cells within CiS. To the author’s knowledge, this is the first report to show clinical evidence emphasizing the immunogenicity and immune-suppressive environment of canine colorectal CiS. Our case will be valuable in providing a rationale for basic research that dissects the immune environment for canine colorectal cancers for the future development of cancer immunotherapy.

Aucubin is a small compound naturally found in traditional medicinal herbs with primarily anti-inflammatory and protective effects. In the nervous system, aucubin is reported to be neuroprotective by enhancing neuronal survival and inhibiting apoptotic cell death in cultures and disease models. Our previous data, however, suggest that aucubin facilitates neurite elongation in cultured hippocampal neurons and axonal regrowth in regenerating sciatic nerves. Here, we investigated whether aucubin facilitates the differentiation of neural precursor cells (NPCs) into specific types of neurons. In NPCs cultured primarily from the rat embryonic hippocampus, aucubin significantly elevated the number of GAD65/67 immunoreactive cells and the expression of GAD65/67 proteins was upregulated dramatically by more than three-fold at relatively low concentrations of aucubin (0.01 µM to 10 µM). The expression of both NeuN and vGluT1 of NPCs, the markers for neurons and glutamatergic cells, respectively, and the number of vGluT1 immunoreactive cells also increased with higher concentrations of aucubin (1 µM and 10 µM), but the ratio of the increases was largely lower than GAD expression and GAD immunoreactive cells. The GABAergic differentiation of pax6-expressing late NPCs into GABA-producing cells was further supported in cortical NPCs primarily cultured from transgenic mouse brains, which express recombinant GFP under the control of pax6 promoter. The results suggest that aucubin can be developed as a therapeutic candidate for neurodegenerative disorders caused by the loss of inhibitory GABAergic neurons.
Animals ; Axons ; Brain ; Cell Death ; GABAergic Neurons* ; Hippocampus ; Mice ; Mice, Transgenic ; Nervous System ; Neurites ; Neurodegenerative Diseases ; Neurons ; Plants, Medicinal ; Rats ; Sciatic Nerve