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Consumer Spending on Animal Health Increases Globally

Consumer spending on animal health and animal health products worldwide is set to exceed £23 billion before the end of the decade. Market experts forecast a global year on year growth of around 8% in spending on veterinary medicines, veterinary diagnostics and animal health care over the next four years.

Increasing desire for companion animals in the home

This boom in demand for veterinary services and veterinary products reflects a global increase in population and per-capita income as developing countries aspire to achieve western diets and lifestyles. Higher demand for meat and milk products, accompanied by a rising desire for companion animals in the home, is pushing nations such as China and India into the league of big spenders on veterinary products and services.

In developed countries, increased spending on commercial animal vet services is driven by growing concern for animal welfare backed up by statutory veterinary testing, recording and immunisation. Heightened appreciation of the psychological and therapeutic advantages of pet ownership, and the trend toward regarding pets as family members, has driven up spending on companion animal welfare.

So much potential for spending on veterinary treatments

Across the UK, spending on veterinary medicines alone exceeded £617 million in 2015 – a growth of 60% in just 10 years, with companion animals accounting for 55% of the market last year. With so much potential for spending on veterinary treatments and interventions, the importance of achieving savings through timely and accurate veterinary diagnostics is paramount for veterinary practitioners and pet owners alike.

Infections that can cross the animal-human frontier

And it’s not just saving money on a treatment that makes time efficient and cost effective veterinary diagnostics more important than ever before. The natural consequence of more and more commercial and companion animals is more and closer contact between animals and people. What scientists call ‘zoonotic diseases’ – infections that can cross the animal-human frontier, may exploit this close contact to evolve increased resistance – even immunity to traditional pharmacological interventions. Left undetected and untreated, infectious agents – including viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasitic organisms pose a risk of becoming persistent in host animals and transmissible to human populations either by contact with infected animals or the consumption of infected animal products.

This is a time of growing necessity as well as growing willingness for governments, organisations and individuals to invest in animal health and welfare, and for veterinary professionals and veterinary laboratories to take a lead in the detection and diagnosis of zoonotic infections in commercial and companion animals.

LipoClear Tubes

Veterinary laboratories are expected to get perfect diagnostic results from less than perfect blood samples. LipoClear tubes out-perform time-consuming solvent based clean-ups to give photometrically clear, lipoprotein free samples in a matter of minutes.

Diagnostic tests based on photometric analysis need optically clear samples. These tests check the health of active proteins (enzymes) by measuring the change (absorbance) in a beam of light passing through the sample. Any light-absorbing contaminant will give a false reading that might lead to an incorrect diagnosis and ineffective treatment.

Hyperlipaemia can also be a serious problem

High levels of low-density lipoproteins (chylomicrons) in the blood cause opaque or cloudy serum samples. Often due to an animal’s health or diet, this hyperlipaemia can also be a serious problem in poorly stored blood samples arriving at the laboratory long past their best. To make matters worse, these samples are often haemolysed – evidenced by the dark red-brown colour of haemoglobin breakdown.

Whatever the cause, the turbidity created by fatty-proteins and haemoglobin must be removed before photometry can be trusted. In the past, blood and serum samples were cleared using a time-consuming and potentially lethal mixture of solvents such as chloroform and phenol, together with powerful and unpleasant synthetic detergents. These chemicals were not only dangerous for laboratory staff, but risked a significant waste disposal hazard.

Pre-measured clearing reagent to treat 0.5ml of haemolysed or hyperlipaemic serum or plasma

LipoClear Tubes require no organic solvents, as the clearing process is entirely water-based.  Each of the 1.5ml plastic centrifuge tubes in the 10-test or 40-test kit contains enough pre-measured clearing reagent to treat 0.5ml of haemolysed or hyperlipaemic serum or plasma. 5 minutes at room temperature starts the process and a short spin in a standard veterinary centrifuge, equipped to take 1.5ml centrifuge tubes, completes the clean-up.

At the end of the spin, the heavier matter will have formed a solid pellet at the bottom of the tube while the less dense material forms a floating plug at the surface. Carefully tilting the tube to pour off the cleared liquid will leave the pellet fixed at the bottom, and the plug stuck to the side-wall.

Without efficient removal of interfering lipids, photometric error is almost inevitable. Introducing LipoClear treatment as the first step in the process is straightforward and cost-effective. Easily stored and ready for use, keeping a pack in the fridge gives complete confidence in test results – even from those unexpected, yet sadly inevitable, lipaemic and haemolysed samples.

For Further Information Visit Our Website www.vetlabsupplies.co.uk