The immunopathology of canine vector-borne diseases

Vector-borne diseases affecting the domestic dog are of major global significance for their impact on the health and well being of these companion and working animals, and also because for some of these diseases the dog acts as a reservoir species for infection of the human population. The most significant of these diseases are bacterial and microparasitic and these are summarized in Table 1. These diseases have received the attention of the veterinary and public health research communities in recent years and progress in such research forms the focus of the annual series of Canine Vector-Borne Disease (CVBD) workshops hosted by Bayer and now summarized in the pages of this journal.The greatest research activity has focussed on the molecular speciation of the infectious agents, definition of their parasite vectors, the geographical distribution and movement of agents and vectors, the clinical syndromes expressed by infected dogs and people and elements of the pathogenicity of the causative organisms. The more challenging aspect for research remains an exploration of the pathology and secondary immunopathology established in dogs by these infections and the nature of the immune response made by the canine host to the pathogens. There are practical reasons why this important area of research has been poorly addressed to date, including: (1) the ethics and expense of working with the dog as an experimental animal, (2) the problem, for some diseases, of establishing reliable and repeatable in-vivo model systems, (3) the challenges in assembling significantly large populations of spontaneously-infected and well-characterized clinical populations, (4) the availability of appropriate immunological reagents and molecular methodology for dissection of the canine immune response relative to such investigations in man or laboratory rodents, and (5) the difficulty in attracting appropriate research funding for the investigation of canine disease. With the publication of version