Lymphangiosarcoma is a rare tumour in domestic animals arising from lymphatic endothelial cells. Occasionally, microscopic differentiation with haemangiosarcoma may be difficult. The aim of the present study was to describe a lymphangiosarcoma in a 1-year-old female Doberman Pinscher dog and to characterize its lectinhistochemical binding pattern as compared with that of haemangiosarcoma. The dog was presented because of a cutaneous painful swelling located in the left axilla. Histological diagnosis confirmed lymphangiosarcoma. The dog was killed. Necropsy revealed mediastinal lymph nodes' involvement. Twenty lectins were tested in tissue sections of this case as well as in four haemangiosarcomas from other dogs. Staining intensity was issued upon optical density determinations. Percentage of lectinhistochemical staining area was also conducted. RCA-I showed the most intense and wide distributed labelling pattern for lymphangiosarcoma. PHA-E was the counterpart for haemangiosarcoma. Should similar results be obtained in further studies, such differences could aid in the differential diagnosis between lymphangiosarcoma and haemangiosarcoma when histological pictures were not conclusive.

Spontaneous invasive non-inflammatory canine mammary carcinomas (CMC) and their regional lymph nodes (LN) were analysed (n = 136). Histological grade (HG) and vascular invasion (VI) in the tumours and lymph node status were recorded. Proliferation index (PI), microvessel density (MVD) and vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 (VEGFR2) expression were estimated using anti-proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), anti-von Willebrand factor and anti-Flk-1, respectively. Eighteen months follow-up was performed (34 bitches). Tumours of different grades showed differences regarding PI, Flk-1/integrated optical density (Flk-1/IOD) and MVD. Every feature showed significant association with LN status through bivariate analyses. From multivariate analyses, VI and Flk-1/IOD were selected to predict LN status. Data revealed that the probability of a CMC-bearing bitch to remain alive at 1, 4, 5 and 14-18 months was 0.91, 0.87, 0.81 and 0.77, respectively. Besides LN status, VI was the only feature positively correlated with survival time, although a trend to shorter survival of animal patients bearing high expressing VEGFR2 CMC was noted.

The nucleotide sequences of the long terminal repeat of five Japanese, five Argentine and three Australian isolates of feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) were determined and compared with those of isolates previously described. The results revealed that the Japanese isolates were found to cluster with nucleotide sequence similarity of 95.6%-99.4%. The Australian isolates also clustered with nucleotide sequence similarity of 97.2%-99.4%. The Argentine isolates formed two groups; the LP9 isolate is closely related to the Japanese isolates, whereas the LP1, LP3, LP20 and LP24 isolates are distant from both the Japanese and Australian isolates. From these results, FIV can be divided into three groups, namely: (I) the Californian, Australian and British isolates; (II) the Japanese isolates and one Argentine LP9 isolate; (III) the other Argentine isolates.

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A comparative study was conducted in ten dogs with signs of prostatic disease in order to evaluate the usefulness of the prepubic and transrectal ultrasonography for the examination of the prostate gland and for prostate biopsy guidance. Both techniques were adequate to identify the prostate gland and prostatic urethra. Transrectal ultrasound found 5 occurrencies of parenchymal echogenicity changes whereas the prepubic technique found only 2. Lesions in the cranial prostatic margin (two dogs) were detected only by prepubic ultrasound. Lesions of the caudal prostatic margin (six dogs), prostatic urethra disruption (two dogs) and prostatic capsule abnormalities (five dogs) were only recognized by the transrectal approach. Prepubic ultrasonography was useful for biopsy guidance of cranial prostatic lesions and transrectal ultrasonography was a good means for biopsy guidance of caudal lesions.