Animals really are man's best research friend

Leading veterinary schools across the country are involved in a range of research which could result in new treatments for some of the most serious human diseases such as cancer, HIV, avian flu, CJD, sleeping sickness and river blindness.

Work on arthritis and paralysis is also thought to have the potential to alleviate human as well as animal suffering.

Leading vets said the gap between the two forms of medicine was becoming increasingly blurred, while animal rights activists welcomed the potential for spin-offs from new treatments for cows, sheep, dogs, cats and others, which would help humans.

Earlier this month, the World Health Organisation warned that 30 animal viruses had mutated into conditions which could infect humans in the past 30 years and it is thought this is one area where veterinary research could prove invaluable.

Dr Nick Jeffery, of Cambridge University’s vet school, said work being carried out there on a vaccine against avian flu in birds could potentially help develop a vaccine against the human form of the virus.

Scientists are predicting that the bird flu virus, which has killed about three-quarters of people infected, will gain the ability to transfer between humans and create a devastating pandemic, which could kill millions of people.

"There’s a lot of interested research at the vet school that does have wider applications - things like working on vaccinations for bird flu, there are people doing that. If bird flu takes off, it will be a pretty scary thing," Dr Jeffery said.

"There are also people here studying BSE. It’s quite important to know whether you can detect whether people are infected."

Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human illness believed to be caused by BSE, is extremely difficult to diagnose and is usually only confirmed by post-mortem tests.

Dr Jeffery said there was a common misconception that vets were not involved in cutting-edge science. But he said: "We are not just ‘poodle hairdressers’. It’s not all just to do with looking after animals. The techniques we are using do have wider applications."

He has been working on a potential treatment for dogs paralysed by spinal injuries - using specialised cells from the nose that support nerve cells which are able to regenerate.

The specialised cells have been implanted in the dogs’ spines in the hope of reactivating the severed spinal nerves, with some promising early signs and it is thought the same techniques could perhaps be used in humans.

However Dr Jeffery said they were still at a very early stage, describing their progress as like a climber being "200 yards from base camp" when trying to scale Mount Everest.

Dr Jeremy Bradshaw, of the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies in Edinburgh, went even further and said human and animal medicine appeared to be merging.

"There is an enormous overlap between the two. The lines between them are becoming so blurred not least because so many human conditions are studied through animal models, so by definition you are actually looking at animal medicine as well," he said.

"There’s so much overlap, it is quite difficult to separate the two."

There is ongoing work at Edinburgh vet school into sleeping sickness, a major killer in parts of Africa. It is caused by a parasite spread by the tsetse fly from cattle to humans, and initially produces malaria-like symptoms. It then causes the patient to fall into a coma and almost certainly die without treatment.

It costs more than 100 to treat a human with the condition, but only about 25p to treat each cow.

Recent research by scientists at Edinburgh vet school into the prevalence of the parasites in cattle in parts of Uganda - showing higher levels than previously thought - has highlighted a "medical emergency" in the area.

Glasgow University’s faculty of veterinary medicine has developed a reputation for studying cancer and immuno-deficiency diseases such as the feline form of HIV. It has also done work on new treatments for arthritis in dogs.

Dr Ian Morgan, of the faculty, said: "If a dog comes in with cancer and we have some novel therapy we want to give it - and we get ethical approval to do that from everyone concerned - we could see that it may well be a benefit to humans as well."

However, he said a sick animal that was suffering and should be put down would not be used for experimental treatments. "Contrary to what some people might think, people really care about their animals and that would be the last thing that would happen."

John Robbins, of Animal Concern, said he was happy if veterinary research could be used to help humans.

"If they haven’t created the condition in the animal then we have always said we wouldn’t object as long as the animal was not subjected to increased suffering," he said.

"If their first principle is that they are trying to alleviate the condition in the animal and if there is a spin-off [for humans], then that’s terrific.

"But their first objective has to be to alleviate suffering in that animal."

He said this would extend to attempting to save an animal with a new technique.

"It’s like heart transplant surgery. An awful lot of people died in the early days of heart transplant surgery. That’s how they learned to do it. But these people were willing patients," he said.

"Many of the operations weren’t successful but it was only through doing those that we now have heart transplant surgery as a fairly routine thing.

"I wouldn’t call them experimental models, the [doctors] were genuinely trying to save the patients. And if they were genuinely trying to save the animal, I wouldn’t object to that."