An Assessment of Echocardiography as a Diagnostic Tool for Dilated Cardiomyopathy in Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo)
- 1 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, United States
Abstract
Our understanding of the etiology of Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM), which affects about 5% of turkeys, is limited. This limitation may be due to the lack of an easy-to-use diagnostic tool with well-defined parameters and does not involve necropsy. This lack of a widely tested non-necropsy method makes it difficult for a large-scale study of the genetic factors that underlie DCM. Here, we Evaluated Echocardiography (ECHO) for its ease and reliability for identifying DCM-affected turkeys from hatch to four weeks-of-age. The parameters evaluated included Left Ventricular Internal-Diastolic (LVIDd), Internal-Systolic Dimension (LVISd), Interventricular Septum End-Diastolic (IVSEd), Interventricular Septum End-Systolic (IVSEs), Left Ventricular Wall End-Systolic (LVWEs) and Left Ventricular Wall End-Diastolic (LVWEd). To induce DCM, feed containing 700 ppm of Furazolidone (Fz) was fed to turkey poults from one to 28 days-of-age. The LVIDd and LVISd were the most consistent indicators of DCM. Both parameters revealed differences between control and treatment poults of between 25 and 326% at the 4 ages at which ECHO measurements were taken. The average difference in LVIDd between control and poults fed Fz-containing diets ranged from 25% in one week-old to 80% in 4-week-old poults. At similar ages, average differences between control and poults fed Fz-containing diets in LVISd were 74 and 326% respectively. Necropsy of poults that survived to the end of the 4-week Fz-treatment confirmed these ECHO measurements in treatment and normal poults. Our data suggest that using LVIDd and LVISd as parameters make ECHO a reliable tool for identifying DCM in turkeys.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3844/ajavsp.2012.120.125
Copyright: © 2012 Davida Kamara, Kwaku Gyenai, Tuoyu Geng, Robert Lee-Pyle, Frank Pierson, Calvert Larsen and Edward Smith. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Keywords
- Echocardiography
- Dilated Cardiomyopathy
- Furazolidone
- Turkey