Features

Keeping Canine Diabetes Under Control

Diabetes mellitus, a chronic disease affecting 20 million people in the United States, also afflicts our canine companions. Many dogs are predisposed to developing this endocrine disorder and require sophisticated treatment to keep it in check.

Rebecka Hess, chief of the Section of Medicine at the School of Veterinary Medicine and an associate professor of medicine in Penn Vet’s Department of Clinical Studies, has spent her career identifying and improving treatments for dogs and cats afflicted with diabetes and other diseases caused by disruptions to hormone signaling. Her latest clinical trial, for which she is currently recruiting dogs with well-regulated diabetes, aims to test how well a strategy commonly used to treat humans with diabetes will aid in better controlling the disease in canines.

“This, we hope, will lead to longer survival and better long-term quality of life,” Hess says.

Read more about Dr. Hess's research »

Keeping Cricket Farms Chirping

According to superstition, a cricket in the house means good luck. But the common brown or house cricket (Acheta domesticus) itself has been experiencing a great deal of bad luck lately due to the emergence of a virus that can cause high mortality (95% or more) in infected crickets.

While it may not seem like a big deal, losing crickets is worrisome for those who farm them.

The house cricket is the only species licensed by the USDA to be raised for commercial production. Food to innumerable species, notably reptiles and amphibians, raising crickets for commercial sales in a country where almost 5 million households own a reptile, not to mention the countless animals in zoos for which crickets are a dietary staple, is big business.

And so, when the virus, Acheta domesticus densovirus, started popping up in cricket farms in the U.S., Helen Aceto, PhD, VMD, was asked to get involved.

Read more about crickets here »