In The News

Research into an outbreak of respiratory disease in a community of wild chimpanzees in Uganda's Kibale National Park has identified that a human common cold virus known as rhinovirus C was killing healthy chimps. "This was an explosive outbreak of severe coughing and sneezing," Tony Goldberg, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison's School of Veterinary Medicine and one of the senior authors of a report, said.

Researchers from Iowa State University, the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have collaborated on a research project to develop and test whether a new nanovaccine could be a better way to fight the flu virus.

Now in its third year of helping pets and their owners, Wisconsin Companion Animal Resources, Education, and Social Services is planning to ditch the crowded Quonset hut it currently occupies on Fish Hatchery Road for a much larger building to increase the number of veterinary services it offers and expand its services to other low-income people who struggle to afford medical care for their pets.

Dr. Nigel Cook, professor in Food Animal Production Medicine at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, discussed how lameness in dairy cattle can be prevented with simple changes on dairy farms during a recent Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin webinar.

Keith Poulsen at the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Lab says chronic wasting disease research in Wisconsin is almost non-existent. "We should be paying some more attention to this disease because we don't know enough about it," he said. "Actually, asking more questions than what we have answers to."

A new study from a team led by UW-Madison researchers has discovered new biomarkers that could help distinguish fatal Ebola infections from non-fatal ones. The study’s senior author, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, is a virology professor at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. He led a team studying Ebola cases in Sierra Leone, which saw a “major outbreak” of the disease in 2014.

While trying to avoid alarmism, global health agencies are steadily ratcheting up concern about bird flu in Asia. Bird viruses that can infect humans — particularly those of the H7N9 strain — continue to spread to new cities there. Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a well-known virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, showed that a Chinese H7N9 strain could both kill ferrets and be transmitted between them.  

Wildlife researchers in Wisconsin need hunters to test their deer to fill gaps in knowledge about Chronic Wasting Disease. Keith Poulsen, director of outreach at the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, says that hunter help is essential to studying CWD.

The study, led by Ian Duncan at the UW School of Veterinary Medicine, found renewed but thin myelin sheaths are able to restore the defective nervous system for years.