Welcome to the Fiscal Years 2005 and 2006 Biannual Report of the Purdue/ Indiana Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory.  These years have been productive and busy, we have seen several changes in the lab but the mission of the Laboratory to provide accurate and prompt diagnostic veterinary diagnostic services to the animal owners of Indiana remains the same.

In June of ’05, our faculty was joined by Dr. Roman Pogranichniy.  Dr. Pogranichniy immediately began updating the capability and offerings of the ADDL virology and serology sections, both of which he serves as section head.  The year end test numbers reflect some of the needs addressed in the virology and serology sections as requests for services and tests in these sections were markedly increased over the previous fiscal year. During nearly every month of the year, one or sometimes several new tests were brought on line as offered in the virology and serology sections.  It is written that “There is nothing new under the sun”.  This is not a true statement related to disease causative agents.  Over the past several years, animals of various species have encountered ‘new’ disease agents as causes of health disorders.  It is a constant challenge to identify and characterize these ‘new’ agents.

In the fall of ’05 our toxicology section ran tests on urine and vitreous humor samples from animals shown at the Indiana State Fair for the presence of unauthorized substance administration to the animals. A total of 540 animals were tested, 8 were found to be suspect for at least one drug and only one animal was confirmed positive for administration of a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug.

Testing for West Nile Virus infection in the summer of ’05 revealed only one positive foal.  Incidence was found to be much reduced from previous years.

In the fall, ADDL was selected to be one of the 14 National Animal Health Laboratory Network Laboratories to participate in the interlaboratory comparison of technology developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories of Livermore, California which was a prototype machine that can run tests on samples for multiple agents simultaneously. Dr. Vemulapalli and two lab technicians were trained on the operation of the machine and successfully passed the check tests of 18 disease agents detected during a simultaneous instrument run.

 In September, six of the anatomic pathology graduate students of ADDL sat the certifying examination of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists. Their pass rate was 100% on examination that has typical pass rate near 40%.

Technicians in the molecular diagnostic laboratory section also successfully passed check tests for real time Polymerase Chain Reaction testing for classical swine fever, foot and mouth disease, avian influenza and epizootic Newcastle disease.

In the fall of ’05, ADDL performed 1256 tests on hunter killed white-tail deer samples for chronic wasting disease.  All samples tested ‘No resistant prions detected’ which may be interpreted as no chronic wasting disease evidence found in Indiana from the deer surveyed for the disease. The bacteriology and serology sections of the laboratory continued to support the Indiana Johne’s surveillance program by testing fecal samples for culture of the causative organism and serum samples for antibody response to the disease. A number of Laboratory sections were involved with testing samples collected from slaughter plants for scrapie in sheep and goats as support for the national scrapie surveillance and eradication program.  The numbers of positive samples among the samples received and tested continue to decline indicating success in the scrapie eradication program progress. 

In December, Dr. Zheko Kounev left the ADDL to take a position with a commercial company that would allow him to spend significant portions of each year in his native country of Bulgaria.  A search for Dr. Kounev’s avian diagnostician position replacement was initiated by selecting a search committee, that search is ongoing.  In June of ’05, Dr. Steve Lenz joined the ADDL faculty as senior diagnostic pathologist.  Dr. Lenz came to us from Auburn University where he had been faculty member since finishing his PhD degree at Purdue in ’91. Dr. Lenz’ return to Purdue was heartily welcomed.

Areas of significant activity change in the Laboratory comparing FY ’05 to FY ‘04 included increase in histopathology accessions by 20% to 48,438; increase in molecular diagnostics requests of 23% to 2,374; increase of toxicology accessions by 184% to 3,973; increase of virology tests of 46% to 92,713; and increase of Heeke Laboratory avian accessions of 23% to 3,164.

Fiscal Years 2005 and 2006 were  busy and productive years in ADDL.  We are blessed to have a dedicated and accomplished faculty and staff to provide these services to the animal owners of Indiana and in lesser volume to other state’s submitters.