Research Communications of the 24th ECVIM-CA Congress

No conflicts of interest reported. There are only few laboratory markers being evaluated for diagnosing and/or monitoring canine chronic enteropathies, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). S100A12 belongs to the S100/calgranulin-protein family and has been proposed to play a central role in both innate and acquired immune responses. It has been reported to be increased in stool samples, serum and/or intestinal mucosa in human patients with IBD. Myeloperoxidase (MPO) is an enzyme found mostly in granulocytes. Intestinal mucosal levels of MPO have been shown to be increased in animal models and human IBD. To date, S100A12 and MPO levels in intestinal mucosal samples have been reported neither from healthy dogs nor from dogs suffering from IBD. To start investigating this aspect in dogs, the objective of this study was to evaluate mucosal S100A12 and MPO levels in the small and large intestines by using enzyme-linked immunoassay (ELISA) and spectrophotometric methods, respectively. For the study, historical intestinal tissue samples from four different parts of the intestine (duodenum, jejunum, ileum and colon) were used. The samples were taken and snap frozen in liquid nitrogen during necropsy from 12 healthy laboratory beagle dogs after being euthanized when finishing unrelated long-term trials studying canine intestinal microbiota.