Veterinary Medicine

hen in a coop with two eggs on hay on the ground

Poultry in a pandemic: Getting the facts on keeping backyard flocks

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Penn Vet’s Sherrill Davison has seen an increase in phone calls from new flock owners looking for general management resources for their birds. Here, she offers health and safety advice for keeping flocks healthy.

From Penn Vet ・

Illustration of brain with DNA double helix

Getting gene therapy to the brain

Using a large animal model of genetic brain disease, researchers led by John H. Wolfe of the School of Veterinary Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia delivered an effective treatment across the blood-brain barrier to correct the whole brain.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・

Illustration of a T cell releasing signaling molecules, IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, IL-10, and IL-13

Navigating cytokine storms

Pairing their expertise, Nilam Mangalmurti of the Perelman School of Medicine and Christopher Hunter of the School of Veterinary Medicine have been working to understand the protective and harmful aspects of the immune response, including in COVID-19.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・

close-up image of bat on a tree trunk; three bare trees are in the right background

Bats and COVID

A new study from Penn Vet's New Bolton Center tests the guano of North American bats currently in Pennsylvania wildlife rehabilitation centers for the presence of COVID-19.

Kristina García ・



Media Contact


Katherine Unger Baillie

Katherine Unger Baillie Senior Science News Officer
kbaillie@upenn.edu

In the News


Fast Company

UPenn releases surprising report on 9/11 rescue dogs and their causes of death

Research from the School of Veterinary Medicine tracked the causes of death for 95 search-and-rescue dogs deployed on 9/11 and showed that most of the dogs died of typical age-related conditions and outlived others of their breeds. “Dogs have a really good filtering system,” said Cynthia Otto. “Their lungs are different—they don’t get asthma, for example.”

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Philadelphia Inquirer

Billy the Philly hero dog wins state vet award for bravery

Rachel Williams and Martin Hackett of the School of Veterinary Medicine spoke about Billy, a local dog that survived multiple gunshots sustained while protecting his owners from armed robbers. “He’s really almost a miracle,” said Williams.

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Science

What does the COVID-19 summer surge mean for your cats and dogs?

Shelley Rankin of the School of Veterinary Medicine spoke about pets and COVID-19 transmission. “If you are not taking precautions … you are putting both yourself and your animal at risk,” she said. “If you are a responsible pet owner, then it is probably safe to say that your animal’s risk [of infection] is lower than yours.”

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The Wall Street Journal

Tired of the people in your family? Some are teaching their dogs to talk

Carlo Siracusa of the School of Veterinary Medicine weighed in on teaching dogs to communicate by pressing buttons assigned to human words. “People can do it, it’s fun, but I think it’s much more important from the dog welfare standpoint that we make an effort to understand the dog’s language,” he said.

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NBC News

How old is your dog? New equation shows how to calculate its age in human years

Margret Casal of the School of Veterinary Medicine offered advice for promoting longevity in dogs and commented on a new equation to measure how dogs age. “It will be interesting to look at different breeds," she said. "We know that some smaller breeds live longer and some larger ones don’t live quite as long.”

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USA Today

USDA confirms that Winston the pug, believed to be first dog with coronavirus, was never infected

Shelley Rankin of the School of Veterinary Medicine said there may have been discrepancies in how labs have tested pets for COVID-19. “Samples can be positive initially but can be degraded with specimen handling,” she said, and false positives “can also occur if the original specimen had a very low number of organisms.”

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