BACKGROUND Pigeon breeder's disease is an extrinsic allergic alveolitis in the lungs of sensitised people, caused by hypersensitivity reactions to inhaled pigeon antigens. Antigens from different sources of the animal are used for diagnostic purposes, with serum being the most widely used. Bloom is rarely used; very little is known of its antigenicity and diagnostic performance, particularly wh...

BACKGROUND Avian antigen is a common cause of hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP). Inhalation challenge with pigeon serum and pigeon dropping extract (PDE) elicits a hypersensitivity reaction in patients with bird-related hypersensitivity pneumonitis (BRHP), but the antigenic components in these materials have yet to be fully elucidated. METHOD Pigeon serum, pigeon intestine homogenates, and PD...

The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was an iconic species of bird in eastern North America that comprised 25-40% of North American avifauna. Passenger Pigeons went extinct in 1914 due to excessive hunting over the previous 50 years. Current research aims to de-extinct the Passenger Pigeon and someday release the species into its historic range. To determine under which conditions a Pa...

Phage type 99 of Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium variant Copenhagen strains isolated from pigeons were examined for the presence of genotypic and phenotypic characteristics. The pulsed-field gel electrophoresis patterns obtained with XbaI and BlnI from 38 pigeon strains were compared with those obtained from 89 porcine, poultry, and human strains of variant Copenhagen. I...

Background: Circoviruses are small, non-enveloped, single stranded DNA viruses. There is scarce information about these agents in non-psittacine birds. Aims: It is attempted to detect and characterize circoviruses in non-psittacine birds. Methods: Forty-five samples were collected from different non-psittacine species belonging to seven avian o...

Perennial crops have numerous ecological and agronomic advantages over their annual counterparts. We estimate discrete choice models to evaluate farmers' preferences for perennial attributes of pigeon pea intercropped with maize in central and southern Malawi. Pigeon pea is a nitrogen-fixing leguminous crop, which has the potential to ameliorate soil fertility problems related to continuous mai...

The agglutination of avian red cells, particularly pigeon and budgerigar cells, by sera from patients who had been exposed to birds and had respiratory symptoms, as well as from healthy bird fanciers, has been used to detect the presence of avian specific antibody. Agglutination tests performed by standard techniques using bird erythrocytes can be read within 45 minutes. One hundred and sixty-f...

The full-length pigeon ovalbumin (OVA) gene cDNA was cloned and sequenced by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and rapid-amplification of cDNA ends. A 386-amino acid protein was predicted for the obtained sequence, which had 67% identity with the chicken protein. Similar to chicken OVA, the pigeon OVA gene is a non-inhibitory serine protease inhibitor. Quantitative PCR an...

Two-hundred pigeon breeders attending a national convention were studied for a possible correlation between the hobby of raising pigeons and the incidence of respiratory or immunologic abnormalities. Information concerning his exposwe to pigeons, respiratory symptoms and smoking habits was obtained from each breeder. Chest x-ray examinations and pulmonary function tests were also obtained, and ...

Background and Purpose: Cryptococcus species are pathogenic and non-pathogenic basidiomycete yeasts that are found widely in the environment. Based on phenotypic methods, this genus has many species; however, its taxonomy is presently being re- evaluated by modern techniques. The Cryptococcus species complex includes two sibling taxa of Cryptococcus neoformans and Cryptococcus gattii. We aimed ...