Research Communications of the 27(th) ECVIM-CA Congress: Intercontinental, Saint Julian's, Malta, 14th to 16th September 2017

Serum samples were collected from 21 dogs diagnosed with active LP IBD. All dogs had undergone upper and/or lower GI endoscopy according to clinical signs, were diagnosed histopathologically according to the guidelines of the WSAVA International Gastrointestinal Standardization Group (Washabau et al. 2010) and by clinical exclusion diagnosis. In addition, serum samples were available from 14 clinically healthy control dogs for comparison. Total RNA from serum was isolated using Trizol, and reverse transcribed into cDNA. The expression of serum miRs genes was measured using real-time quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (real-time qRT-PCR). Clinical disease activity was recorded for all dogs using the Canine Chronic Enteropathy Clinical Activity Index (CCECAI; Allenspach et al. 2008) . Endoscopies were performed and graded according to the canine IBD endoscopic index (Slovak et al. 2014) .