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Veterinary Medicine

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

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.”

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

An immune response can be helpful, harmful, or somewhere in between, in COVID-19 and many other medical conditions. 

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

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

Pennsylvania is home to nine bat species including the big brown bat, pictured here. Image: Pennsylvania Game Commission. 

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

Glowing dye may aid in eliminating cancer
Surgeon uses an imaging machine to assess a tumor

David Holt of the School of Veterinary Medicine and colleagues have been using an innovative imaging technique to seek out cancer in dogs undergoing surgery. (Image: John Donges)

Glowing dye may aid in eliminating cancer

In dogs with mammary tumors, researchers from the School of Veterinary Medicine and Perelman School of Medicine used a substance that glows under near-infrared light to illuminate cancer.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Food insecurity, not the ‘Quarantine 15,’ is the real pandemic concern
A line of people outside a food bank wait on a sidewalk practicing social distancing and wearing face masks.

A crowd of people wait in line outside a food pantry at St. Bartholomew's Roman Catholic Church in Elmhurst, Queens.

Food insecurity, not the ‘Quarantine 15,’ is the real pandemic concern

But results from a recent nationwide survey conducted by Penn researchers indicate that household food insecurity is a real effect of the pandemic, and not weight gain.

From Penn Vet

Helping pets cope with quarantine, and reopening
Veterinarian in white coat holds hand out to a cat perched on a filing cabinet

Carlo Siracusa, associate professor of clinical behavior medicine at the School of Veterinary Medicine (Image: John Donges/Penn Vet)

Helping pets cope with quarantine, and reopening

Having their owners at home constantly may have been heaven for some cats and dogs and burdensome for others. The School of Veterinary Medicine’s Carlo Siracusa explains how to recognize signs of animals’ stress and prepare for a return to normal routines.

Katherine Unger Baillie

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

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.”

Penn is training dogs to sniff out COVID-19 in humans

Penn is training dogs to sniff out COVID-19 in humans

Cynthia Otto of the School of Veterinary Medicine spoke about the Working Dog Center’s efforts to train dogs to detect COVID-19 in humans. “Basically, we are looking at urine samples. We are hoping to look at saliva and breath samples as well,” she said. “We are going to tell basically if there is an odor excreted in these samples.”

Virtual vet app wins Penn Wharton Startup Challenge
screen shot of a member of My Virtual Vet on the computer screen with a visual of the 2020 Virtual Startup Challenge Awards Ceremony cover photo

Virtual vet app wins Penn Wharton Startup Challenge

Penn Wharton Startup Challenge Competition winner My Virtual Veterinarian, a virtual veterinary portal for pet owners, makes it possible for pets to receive the care they need, when they need it.

Dee Patel