The Effect of the Bacteriological Status of Feed on Some Haematological and Blood Chemical Data on Mink

Serum Analytes of American Mink (Neovison Vison) Challenged with Aleutian Mink Disease Virus

“…The considerable differences among CREA concentrations in different studies may be an effect of factors other than kidney damage. A large array of physiological and external factors, which are independent of the degree of renal damage, significantly influenced CREA concentrations in different species, such as time after feeding in mink [ 40 , 46 ], stage of lactation in mink [ 72 , 74 ], cooked or raw meat in mink [ 40 ] and dogs [ 75 ], dietary protein content in mink [ 60 ] and blue foxes [ 52 ], body weight in dogs and cats [ 48 ], lean body mass in dogs [ 76 ], and bacterial content of feed in mink [ 50 ]. The wide range of estimates and the effects of such a large number of factors, thus, make the merit of CREA as a predictor of kidney damage uncertain.…”

“…The reported means of ALT activity in non-infected mink were highly variable, showing a five-fold difference (68.8 to 385 U/L) across 12 reports. The wide range of the reported values for ALT was due to several factors affecting its activity, such as the rate of decomposition of amino acids and protein metabolism [ 88 ], the dietary protein content in mink [ 45 , 60 ] and blue foxes [ 52 ], the bacterial count in feed in mink [ 50 ], food deprivation in mink [ 39 ], and other factors reported for humans (reviewed in [ 59 ]). The wide range of ALT activity (21.0 to 570 U/L) and its relatively large CV (69.0) in the current study, along with large ranges of reported values for healthy mink, suggest that the prognostic value of ALT activity for tolerance to AMDV infection is uncertain.…”

“…Although AMDV infection has been reported to have no effect on TBL concentration in mink [ 33 ], the overall mean TBL in the current study (4.63 μmol/L) was greater than the 2.50 μmol/L in non-infected farmed mink and 2.035 μmol/L reported in free-ranging mink kept under the same conditions for one month prior to sampling [ 91 ]. Different levels of bacterial contamination of feed had no effect on TBL activity (2.07, 2.21, and 2.36 μmol/L) [ 50 ]. In contrast, the plasma concentrations of TBL were 7.6 and 7.7 μmol/L in male and female healthy black mink, respectively, and were not significantly changed with food deprivation [ 39 ].…”

“…The GGT activity in the current study (2.15 U/L) was slightly lower than that previously reported 3.02 U/L in AMDV inoculated female mink [ 14 ]. The GGT activities in two groups of mink fed bacterial contaminated diets (20.4, 22.8 U/L, corresponding to 0.34 and 0.38 μkal/L, respectively), were significantly greater than that in mink fed a diet with low bacterial contamination (4.2 U/L, 0.07 μkal/L) [ 50 ], suggesting a considerable effect of feed contamination on organ damage and GGT activity. Factors other than liver diseases influence GGT activity in different species; for example, significantly lower GGT activity has been associated with low protein diets in blue foxes [ 52 ].…”

“…For instance, no indication of the normality testing prior to a multi-way analysis of variance for blood analytes was reported in mink [ 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 ], dogs [ 42 ], cats [ 43 ], and chickens [ 44 ]. Blood analytes have also been compared between two [ 33 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 ] or more groups [ 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 ] with a t-test without prior normality testing. The logarithmic transformation has normalizing and variance equalizing effects on positively skewed distributions [ 36 , 56 , 57 , 58 ], and has frequently been applied to some blood analytes to achieve normality [ 42 , 59 ] or homogeneity of variances [ 45 , 60 ].…”