Roles of probiotic microorganisms in digestive physiology are contributed to enhancing animals health and reducing the incidence of gastrointestinal diseases. Banning the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in poultry in many countries has been contributed to the increasing use of probiotics because long-term use of antibiotics causes antibiotic resistance of pathogenic bacteria in poultry a...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the risk factors for the development of occupational allergy to birds among Polish zoo garden keepers. METHODS A total of 200 bird zookeepers employed in the Polish zoo gardens in KLódź, Warsaw, Gdańsk, Chorzów and Płock and exposed occupationally to bird allergens were examined using a questionnaire, skin prick tests (SPTs) to common allergens and bird allergens, spiro...

Infectious diseases increasingly play a role in the decline of wildlife populations. Vector-borne diseases, in particular, have been implicated in mass mortality events and localized population declines are threatening some species with extinction. Transmission patterns for vector-borne diseases are influenced by the spatial distribution of vectors and are therefore not uniform across the lands...

Since 1997, highly pathogenic avian influenza subtype H5N1 has emerged to cause severe disease in humans in over 15 countries. Humans who have regular contact with poultry or wild birds may be at greater risk of infection with highly pathogenic avian influenza and other zoonotic avian diseases. To develop preventative measures for transmission of avian influenza to high-risk human populations i...

We are all children at heart. When we want something, we want it now and are willing to trust in fate if it means that we can get it now. Many bird owners are like this. They want a bird, so they buy it. They don’t necessarily spend the time to research the source of the bird, and often there is little money left over to make sure that their purchase is healthy. Many people buy birds and know v...

Despite increasing control measures, numerous parasitic and infectious diseases are emerging, re-emerging or causing recurrent outbreaks particularly in Asia and the Pacific region, a hot spot of both infectious disease emergence and biodiversity at risk. We investigate how biodiversity affects the distribution of infectious diseases and their outbreaks in this region, taking into account socio...

BACKGROUND In chronic hypersensitivity pneumonitis (chronic HP), antigen avoidance is critical for disease management; however, complete avoidance is difficult because of unrecognized exposure to antigens. Recently, we revealed that the amount of avian antigen (AAA) in household dust at the time of diagnosis predicted the progression of chronic bird-related HP. The purpose of this study is to e...

Parasite host switches may trigger disease emergence, but prehistoric host ranges are often unknowable. Lymphatic filariasis and loiasis are major human diseases caused by the insect-borne filarial nematodes Brugia, Wuchereria and Loa. Here we show that the genomes of these nematodes and seven tropical bird lineages exclusively share a novel retrotransposon, AviRTE, resulting from horizontal tr...