Research Communications of the 24th ECVIM-CA Congress

The 3rd and 4th author (M. Hennies and C. Wienen) work for the company TECOmedical Group that developed the ELISA which was evaluated in the study. They provided the kits and they helped with performing the tests, but they did not have any influence on the results and the interpretation of the data. Canine idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (CIPF) is a progressive interstitial lung disease that mainly occurs in the West Highland white terrier (WHWT) breed. The CIPF diagnosis commonly relies on thoracic high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) findings and ultimately on histopathology. As those tests are not easily performed in practice, identification of measurable markers of fibrosis, that might help to diagnose and/or monitor the course of CIPF, is helpful. VEGF is an angiogenic regulator involved in a variety of physiological and pathological processes. In human IPF, serum VEGF concentration has been shown to be higher in IPF patients compared to healthy volunteers and may reflect the severity of the lung disease. The aims of the present study were (1) to investigate the potential role of VEGF as a peripheral blood biomarker in CIPF; and (2) to investigate possible breed-related differences in basal VEGF concentration, that might explain the high predisposition of the WHWT breed for CIPF.Therefore, VEGF was determined by ELISA (Canine VEGF Quantikine ELISA Kit, R&D systems) in the serum of 14 WHWT with CIPF confirmed by HRCT and/or histopathology (median age 11 years, range 5-14), 18 healthy WHWT (9, 3-17), and 85 healthy dogs of other breeds, including: 14 Scottish terrier (ST) (5, 1-10), 16 Jack Russell terrier (JRT) (7, 1-12), 15 Maltese (6, 1-13), 14 King Charles Spaniel (KCS) (6, 1-10), 12 Labrador Retriever (LR) (6, 2-12) and 14 Malinois Belgian Shepherd (6, 2-8). Health status was based on clinical examination, serum biochemistry and haematology in all healthy dogs and a thoracic HRCT was performed in 9/18 healthy WHWT. The Khi² test with the threshold 5% was used for the statistical analysis (XLStat â software). Eight CIPF WHWT (57%) have serum VEGF concentrations above the kit detection limit (39.1 pg/ml) compared to 1 WHWT (0.05%) in the group of healthy dogs (P = 0.001). Concerning inter-breed differences in healthy dogs, most values obtained were below the kit detection limit with only 3 KCS (21%), 3 JRT (19%), 3 LR (25%) and 1 ST (7%) having VEGF serum levels above 39.1 pg/ml (P = 0.147). Results of the present study show that (1) VEGF might be an interesting blood biomarker for CIPF; (2) canine VEGF Quantikine Elisa kit is not appropriate for measurement of serum VEGF levels in healthy canine populations.