Tzu Chi Medical Journal
Volume 19, Issue 3 , Pages 127-133, September 2007

The Role of Comparative Pathology in the Investigation of Zoonoses

  • Chen-Hsuan Liu

      Affiliations

    • Department of Veterinary Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Department of Veterinary Medicine, National Taiwan University, 1, Section 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei, Taiwan
    • ,
  • Yung-Hsiang Hsu

      Affiliations

    • Department of Pathology, Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital and Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan

Received 13 April 2007; received in revised form 1 May 2007; accepted 8 May 2007.

Article Outline

Abstract 

Emerging and re-emerging zoonoses have raised great concerns in both human and animal health worldwide in the past 20 years. Rudolph Virchow proposed a “one medicine” discipline and emphasized the importance of cooperation 150 years ago. In the face of emerging threats from unpredictable zoonoses, human medicine and veterinary medicine should not be separate and independent sciences. Anatomic pathologists who are capable of analyzing and interpreting anatomical manifestations of diseases to obtain a definite diagnosis or exclude a wide variety of diseases play an important role in the diagnostic team. Although disease-associated microbes are numerous, morphologic patterns of tissue reaction caused by microbes are limited. Therefore, the interactions between microbes and host determine the histological changes in the target tissues. The contributions of anatomic pathology, with its use of morphologic similarities and special techniques, are important in zoonosis diagnosis. This can be seen in retrospective case studies of recent zoonoses such as multinucleated syncytial giant cells in severe acute respiratory syndrome and mouse hepatitis virus infection, syncytial cells in Henipahvirus infection and paramyxovirus, neuronal vacuolation in bovine spongiform encephalopathy and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and Streptococcus suis type 2 meningitis. In Taiwan, the Chinese Society for Comparative Pathology, which was established in 1994, provides for this interaction. Interlaboratory cooperation plays an important role in the diagnosis, surveillance, and control of emerging and re-emerging zoonoses.

Keywords:  Comparative pathology , One medicine , Zoonoses

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PII: S1016-3190(10)60004-3

doi:10.1016/S1016-3190(10)60004-3

Tzu Chi Medical Journal
Volume 19, Issue 3 , Pages 127-133, September 2007

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