Fertility rates of donkey semen in jennies are lower compared to mares. The aims of this study were to evaluate different sperm cryopreservation methods and insemination strategies to improve the fertility of donkey semen in jennies. Three experiments were performed: (1) the comparison of two freezing methods of donkey semen (conventional method and automated method); (2) the determination of a suitable insemination dose of fresh donkey semen for jennies and mares; and (3) the influence of the semen deposition site on fertility of jennies inseminated with frozen donkey semen. For experiment 1, no differences were observed in total motility, angular velocity, curvilinear velocity, straight-line velocity, and plasma membrane integrity between samples frozen with the conventional (Styrofoam box) and the automated method (TK 4000C). However, the automated method provided higher values of progressive motility and rapid cells in frozen-thawed samples in comparison with the conventional method (P < 0.05). For experiment 2, mares were bred using 500 × 10(6) fresh sperm (M); and jennies using 1 × 10(9) (J1) or 500 × 10(6) fresh sperm (J5). Pregnancy rates in M, J1, and J5 were 93% (14/15), 73% (11/15), and 40% (6/15), respectively. When using different insemination doses, 500 × 10(6) or 1 × 10(9) sperm, no significant difference was observed in pregnancy rates of mares (M, 14/15) and jennies (J1, 11/15). Furthermore, there was no significant difference between the two insemination doses in jennies. However, with an insemination dose of 500 × 10(6) fresh sperm, the pregnancy rates were significantly higher in mares (M, 14/15) than in jennies (J5, 6/15; P < 0.05). For experiment 3, the inseminations were carried out in the uterine body (UB) or in the uterine horn of jennies with frozen-thawed donkey semen. No pregnancies were achieved with inseminations performed in the UB (0/12). The pregnancy rate for uterine horn group was 28.26% (13/46) and thus significantly higher than the UB group (0%; 0/12; P < 0.05). In conclusion, the automated method showed higher values on progressive motility and rapid cells parameters compared to the conventional method and can be used as an alternative for freezing donkey semen. The increase in the number of sperm cells per insemination dose using fresh donkey semen improved the fertility rates in jennies. The deep horn inseminations using frozen-thawed donkey semen increased the pregnancy rate in jennies, and the multiple inseminations may be an option to improve the fertility rates of donkey semen in jennies.

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Diagnosis and biological behavior of breast cancer of female dog represent one of the biggest challenges facing the Veterinarian in recent years. Due to its exponential growth and the degree of aggressiveness, the exact cause of this tumor is probably multifactorial and it is believed that may suffer influence from environmental factors. Among the suspected environmental contaminants are the pyrethroids. Aiming to investigate the participation of pyrethroids in tumorigenesis in female dogs, a study was conducted using 50 female dogs, 22 were positive for simple breast carcinoma (Group I), 18 with a diagnosis of complex breast carcinoma (Group II) and 10 negative (Group III) for breast cancer. In order to detect DNA damage, the Comet assay was performed on mammary samples of these animals, which also had samples submitted to the technique of High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), which aimed to quantify the concentration of pyrethroids. The results of HPLC of each animal were compared with those obtained by the Comet assay analysis of variance and the means were compared by the test groups "Student T" at the significance level of p  0.05. Despite presenting correlation between the amount of DNA damage and tumor aggressiveness, no statistical differences were found in the DNA damage of different histologic types of breast carcinoma. As for pyrethroids, even these were detected in 22% of tumor tissues and peritumoral fat, there was no difference in DNA damage between cells exposed and not exposed to environmental contaminant.

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