Whats your favorite disease??

[Orion12]

Just a fun/dorky thread that I thought would make for good conversation and perhaps maybe I can learn something too

So what is your favorite disease that you have either read about or seen at a clinic? Mine has always been a teratoma which is a benign tumor that can have literally anything in it! Usually they are very different then surrounding tissues and they can contain teeth, eyes, limbs, or just another completely separate tissue. So crazy and totally cool!! Surgery is the treatment for these tumors.

Tell me about your favorite disease! If you know the mechanism behind the disease and how to treat it add that in too.

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[cs5910]

Just a fun/dorky thread that I thought would make for good conversation and perhaps maybe I can learn something too

So what is your favorite disease that you have either read about or seen at a clinic? Mine has always been a teratoma which is a benign tumor that can have literally anything in it! Usually they are very different then surrounding tissues and they can contain teeth, eyes, limbs, or just another completely separate tissue. So crazy and totally cool!! Surgery is the treatment for these tumors.

Tell me about your favorite disease! If you know the mechanism behind the disease and how to treat it add that in too.

My human friend had surgery for a teratoma! Apparently she absorbed her twin when she was in her mothers womb... They removed it when my friend was 18 years old...that critter had a lot of teeth and hair!!

My favorites are the endocrine diseases (Cushing's, Addison's, Hypoparathyroidism etc)... I think the regulation of these diseases are extremely interesting.

 

[cadisestrama]

I haven't really had much experience with disease or whatnot. But I do like the Fibropapilloma virus in sea turtles that causes tumors. It's interesting 'cause not much is known about how it spreads and how to really control/treat it besides removing the tumors themselves.

 

[orca2011]

I really like the prion diseases and would love to get involved in research on them. It started out as just an interest and then my friend's mom died from sporadic CJD, so it became way more personable.

 

[sunshinevet]

I love pancreatitis, septic peritonitis and love/hate parvo. Thats the critical care nerd coming out in me.

 

[cs5910]

I really like the prion diseases and would love to get involved in research on them. It started out as just an interest and then my friend's mom died from sporadic CJD, so it became way more personable.

Wow, I had no idea that we had CJD in the US yet...That's so sad.. I am really sorry about your friend

 

[cowgirla]

If I had to do research, it would totally be on fescue toxicosis. I've been fascinated with it for years. I'm doing my grand rounds presentation on fescue in broodmares and all my reading is doing is creating more questions that no one has answered yet!

I've also got a soft spot for Lyme and other tick borne diseases. And piroplasmosis. And equine encephalitides. And nutritional/metabolic diseases of dairy cattle. And Johnes. And Preg tox.

(Wait, I had to pick one??)

 

[felinelvr44]

I really like the prion diseases and would love to get involved in research on them. It started out as just an interest and then my friend's mom died from sporadic CJD, so it became way more personable.

I looove prion disease. Get a few drinks in me and it's one of my favorite party topics. (Not even kidding - someone asked me at a party literally yesterday what my favorite disease was and I went on and on about prions for 20 minutes, scaring the hell out of them ).

Besides that, I've been enjoying learning about GI issues like IBD, colitis, enteritis, etc. I've been thinking about looking into internal medicine but we'll see how I feel in a few years.

 

[NStarz]

Prion diseases are really neat.

Though, I have to admit, I'm really on a cancer kick lately. It's. So. Damn. Interesting.

 

[neocia]

As a kidney stone-sufferer myself (would not wish kidney stones on anyone!!), I'm interested in renal failure and bladder stones in animals. I also just took a friends' goldfish to get kidney cancer treatment, actually.

 

[wolfspeaker]

And nutritional/metabolic diseases of dairy cattle. And Johnes. And Preg tox.

(Wait, I had to pick one??)

Hate Johnes.

I get a perverse pleasure in draining abscesses on livestock.

E: Yes, I know, not a disease.

 

[485501]

I've never seen a case of it, but my favorite infectious disease is far and away Yersinia pestis. I even have the Giant Microbe plushie of it (I call him Ernie the Plague Bacillus ).

I don't have a favorite genetic disease or environmentally caused disease...at the moment.

 

[JaynaAli]

I love things you can find and diagnose in blood. Cytauxzoon, ehrlichias, and especially fungal infections like histoplasmosis. Granted, the diseases usually suck for the animals, but that goes to show that "cool" for a pathology-minded person isn't exactly "cool" for the animal. I mean, I wouldn't wish it on an animal by any means, but its very satisfying to be the one to discover the cause of the disease.

 

[orca2011]

I looove prion disease. Get a few drinks in me and it's one of my favorite party topics. (Not even kidding - someone asked me at a party literally yesterday what my favorite disease was and I went on and on about prions for 20 minutes, scaring the hell out of them ).

Besides that, I've been enjoying learning about GI issues like IBD, colitis, enteritis, etc. I've been thinking about looking into internal medicine but we'll see how I feel in a few years.

HAhaha. This is totally me. Someone once asked me a quick question about them and then I went on like 20 minute speech. I got so excited when my biochem group actually got assigned to due a presentation on them for class this year. I emailed me group and was like "I hate to be that person, but I'm like seriously excited about this one."

As a kidney stone-sufferer myself (would not wish kidney stones on anyone!!), I'm interested in renal failure and bladder stones in animals. I also just took a friends' goldfish to get kidney cancer treatment, actually.

I'm getting more interested in bladder stones. I have a guinea pig with sludge/possible stone issues and since no one really knows 100% what causes it and the best way to treat it, I've been doing a bit of reading on my own.

 

[orca2011]

Wow, I had no idea that we had CJD in the US yet...That's so sad.. I am really sorry about your friend

I don't think there has been any documented cases of the variant CJD ( the version from BSE infected products) but the sporadic version happens to I think a couple hundred people a year in the states. And then there is a familial and iatrogenic version of it too. And then all the other animal prion disease.

I do feel bad that I get so excited over such a horrible disease. Hearing my friend describe what she and her mom went through is just heartbreaking and she's had a lot of difficulty dealing with the loss.

 

[cloverbug]

I've always been fascinated by the Black Plague. I think it's because such a small organism caused a lot of damage in a very small amount of time, and how to prevent it really wasn't that hard to do. I also like how it reshaped Europe, in that blood types are highly skewed towards A now for some reason I can't fully remember and it's believed that it somehow produced a gene that doesn't make the thingy (the name escapes me) that HIV attaches to. That is pretty nifty.

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

Pythiosis

Any of the systemic fungi - Blasto, Coccidiodes, Histoplasmosis.

I also like the plant toxicoses - eg Veratrum californicum causing cyclopia in lambs

Also GI diseases because they can be so complex....that's what I'm doing my fellowship in.

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

I love things you can find and diagnose in blood. Cytauxzoon, ehrlichias, and especially fungal infections like histoplasmosis. Granted, the diseases usually suck for the animals, but that goes to show that "cool" for a pathology-minded person isn't exactly "cool" for the animal. I mean, I wouldn't wish it on an animal by any means, but its very satisfying to be the one to discover the cause of the disease.

Yup.

Aside from the rabid horses I've have, my favorites were pythium taking over the entire third compartment (equivalent to the abomasum) in a camel and toxoplasmosis in a lemur. Also recently had a cool collision tumor - dog had both a meningioma AND lymphoma that had tracked all through the meninges.

 

[cs5910]

:I get a perverse pleasure in draining abscesses on livestock.

YES. I love draining/popping/squeezing hahah I know its gross, but its so rewarding. Epidermal inclusion cysts have become a hobby of mine at the clinic.

 

[Frozenshades]

Been pretty interested in Chagas disease lately. Seems to be not very well known (it's considered a neglected tropical disease), but it's on the move. Tricky to diagnose, tough to treat.

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

Been pretty interested in Chagas disease lately. Seems to be not very well known (it's considered a neglected tropical disease), but it's on the move. Tricky to diagnose, tough to treat.

Funny story (as a Texan, you'll appreciate this).

My first week on necropsy as a brand-new resident, the pathologist is quizzing the fourth years before we go out on the floor. We had a heart failure case, so he asks "Ok guys, what is a good differential for infectious heart disease in a dog, especially in Texas?"

One of the students pipes up "Chagas!"

I snicker to myself, thinking "Someone's been watching too much House."

Pathologist goes "Good!"

I internally go and think "Where the hell did I move?" Chagas was like a footnote in my classes back on the East Coast!

Take home message: if you end up practicing somewhere else, be prepared to move stuff up and down your differential list. Things you may have almost never heard of may be commonplace there!

 

[cs5910]

"It's never Lupus!" - Hehe I love House!!

 

[Angelo84]

I've never seen a case of it, but my favorite infectious disease is far and away Yersinia pestis. I even have the Giant Microbe plushie of it (I call him Ernie the Plague Bacillus ).

I don't have a favorite genetic disease or environmentally caused disease...at the moment.

Come to Colorado-my first inpatient was a plague case--fun coming out of Tufts where were we pretty much said plague exists in the south west moving on!

 

[485501]

Come to Colorado-my first inpatient was a plague case--fun coming out of Tufts where were we pretty much said plague exists in the south west moving on!

Prarie dogs are a reservoir species in the southwest, right?

 

[Frozenshades]

Funny story (as a Texan, you'll appreciate this).

My first week on necropsy as a brand-new resident, the pathologist is quizzing the fourth years before we go out on the floor. We had a heart failure case, so he asks "Ok guys, what is a good differential for infectious heart disease in a dog, especially in Texas?"

One of the students pipes up "Chagas!"

I snicker to myself, thinking "Someone's been watching too much House."

Pathologist goes "Good!"

I internally go and think "Where the hell did I move?" Chagas was like a footnote in my classes back on the East Coast!

Take home message: if you end up practicing somewhere else, be prepared to move stuff up and down your differential list. Things you may have almost never heard of may be commonplace there!

"It's never Lupus!" - Hehe I love House!!

It's sarcoidosis for sure this time.

 

[ChittyBang]

Demodectic mange.

I also have a soft spot for what I lovingly call "thyroid kitties". You know, the skinny, greasy guys with sunken eyes? Love them.

 

[epivetlove]

Zoonotic diseases all the way! I studied dengue, lassa, and hantavirus for my Master's program and just think anything that can spread from animals to people is fascinating.

 

[EngrSC]

GI stuff because of my own health problems. I shadowed an internist and it was so fascinating. And endocrine diseases ... loved that section of my physio class

 

[pulseczar]

i think schistosomes and giardia are really interesting parasites. I think we can all agree the first time we saw a giardia trophozoite we probably thought it was quite cute.

most interesting topic in vet school has to be acid-base electrolyte imbalances. Affects all systems and is, in my opinion, the toughest area of pathophysiology to grasp theoretically.

 

[skittles12]

I've always thought that laminitis is really interesting. Or EPM--mostly because one of my own horses had it.

 

[Finnsheep]

Any of the ovine RNA viruses...

Maedi-visna is by far the most fascinating to me, but Jaagsiekte, Cache Valley, Schmallenberg, and about a million others are deeply interesting.

Scrapie holds a fair degree of interest, as does actinobacillus (Cruels abscesses). Enterotoxemia as well.

Anything that has to do with sheep, really.

I'm doing Haemonchus and OPP research right now.

 

[Jamr0ckin]

Diabetes mellitus, Cushings, and DIC are 3 of my favorites. I'm a medicine girl.

 

[bunnity]

Diabetes mellitus, Cushings, and DIC are 3 of my favorites. I'm a medicine girl.

Haha those are the ones that make me go, "But why can't I just cut it open instead?"

 

[Minnerbelle]

Come to Colorado-my first inpatient was a plague case--fun coming out of Tufts where were we pretty much said plague exists in the south west moving on!

Yeah no kidding! A shelter cat in CO had huge submandibular lymphadenopathy that was missed because the staff just thought they were just big tom cat jowls. Yeah... well so we figured maybe it was just lymphoma. Next day this cat sneezes into one of the techs' face. That same day, another cat came in with huuuuge lymph nodes. I remembered then that one of the vets was like, "so the top three differentials for lymph nodes like this for cats around here are lymphoma, plague, or tularemia" when we first discovered the first cat's lymph node

Turns out it wasn't plague or tularemia, but it gave us a huge scare and the tech had to go to urgent care.

 

[MysteryCat]

I'm kinda a trauma gal, but anything endocrine is really interesting to me as well. Also? I love this thread!

 

[Coquette22]

Congestive heart failure. Odd, since it claimed my dog. But I just find it fascinating - the mechanisms, the pathology, the physiology. I'm one of those weird people who adores cardiac physiology and anatomy though.

 

[DVMDream]

Congestive heart failure. Odd, since it claimed my dog. But I just find it fascinating - the mechanisms, the pathology, the physiology. I'm one of those weird people who adores cardiac physiology and anatomy though.

Me too!!

I love everything cardiac.. especially the congenital diseases... PDA? I can fix that...

 

[SV88]

the tick borne diseases are quite interesting.

 

[Whyevernot55]

I am obsessed with all things neurology. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that my horse turned into a Super Cool neuro case last fall. I mean, cool if he wasn't personally my horse that I was dealing with.

Also I'm working in a lab that deals in tick-borne disease and I absolutely love parasitology, so that's super fun.

 

[psilovethomas]

I like radiology, so I like diseases the produce really cool images. Like splenic torsion, GDVs, and bone lesions.

 

[Trilt]

Not an animal disease, but on the prion topic, freaking fatal familial insomnia is terrifying. Live until you're in your later years, then you start having trouble sleeping. Then you can't sleep, ever. Even a coma can't get you REM sleep, and you die from that within a year or so. Ugh. Glad it's ridiculously rare.

 

[SV88]

Not an animal disease, but on the prion topic, freaking fatal familial insomnia is terrifying. Live until you're in your later years, then you start having trouble sleeping. Then you can't sleep, ever. Even a coma can't get you REM sleep, and you die from that within a year or so. Ugh. Glad it's ridiculously rare.

Good lord, that sounds like something you'd see on Fringe.

 

[Kylana]

I like avian cholera (Pasteurella multocida) since it is crazy how quickly it can kill thousands of birds at once! Okay well I feel bad saying "like"...maybe I find it interesting and kind of scary?

Echinococcus would be my next fav. I think Taeniid eggs are so pretty

 

[Crystalight33]

Me too!!

I love everything cardiac.. especially the congenital diseases... PDA? I can fix that...

Me three! Lol.

My favorite would have to be hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. I think it's really cool how similar it is in cats and humans. Though now every time I see a cat that is down in the rear legs I'm thinking saddle thrombus

 

[EngrSC]

Not an animal disease, but on the prion topic, freaking fatal familial insomnia is terrifying. Live until you're in your later years, then you start having trouble sleeping. Then you can't sleep, ever. Even a coma can't get you REM sleep, and you die from that within a year or so. Ugh. Glad it's ridiculously rare.

That sounds horrific!!!! I've never even heard of it!