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33rd Annual Scientific Meeting proceedings
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Session:
Date/Time: 30-11--0001 (00:00 - 00:00)
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Location:
The value of fine needle aspirations in the diagnosis of equine sarcoid
Gysens L, Martens A*, Haspeslagh M*
Dep. of Large Animal Surgery, Anaesthesia and Orthopaedics, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ghent University, Merelbeke, Belgium.
Objectives:
Diagnosis of equine sarcoid (ES) remains plagued by the fear of lesion exacerbation and low sensitivity of PCR on swabs of non-ulcerated ES. PCR on fine needle aspiration (FNA) could improve sensitivity while keeping tissue damage minimal.
Methods:
Results of quantitative PCR (Q-PCR) on FNA using a 21G needle, swabs, and tissue from 63 histologically confirmed ES of all clinical types, and 13 non-ES were compared on a qualitative and a quantitative level.
Results:
Bovine papillomavirus was detected in 70% of ES swabs and 98% of ES FNA (p<0.001). In ES with intact epithelium, 63% of swabs and 98% of FNA were positive (p<0.001). The overall specificity was 92% for swabs and 100% for FNA. There was a significant difference in viral load (VL) between swabs and FNA (p<0.001), with the latter giving the best approximation of tissue VL (corr. coeff. r=0.47; p<0.01). There was no significant correlation between VL of swabs and tissue (r=0.35; p=0.06).
Conclusions:
Our results demonstrate that the sensitivity of PCR diagnosis of ES can be drastically improved by taking FNA instead of swabs, especially for non-ulcerated ES. Furthermore, sample contamination by BPV on the surface of non-sarcoid lesions is avoided. We believe that FNA based PCR combined with clinical evaluation should replace histology as the gold standard for ES diagnosis. While VL evolution is often of interest for research purposes, it is omitted to take tissue biopsies to avoid bias in clinical evolution during longitudinal studies. FNA Q-PCR could be a viable alternative in this case.
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