Veterinary medical clinic

This research group comprises various types of veterinarians with different specialities, including livestock, pets and exotic animals. The fields focuses on specific research areas, including internal medicine, imaging diagnostics and laboratory diagnostics.

Research fields

Ruminant internal medicine
This path examines pathologies that affect ruminants and also studies animal welfare and reduction of the productive conditions. The principal areas of interests are the metabolic and nutritional pathologies during the transition period of dairy cows (the weeks before and after birth). The research also investigates the pathologies of producing beef.

Diagnostic imaging applied to ruminants
Diagnostic imaging is an increasingly important tool in veterinary practice and research. Research imaging techniques such as ecography, radiology and thermography are useful for producing more precise and detailed results about the different pathologies of large animals. Diagnostic imaging techniques, along with their innovations and applications, let know in clinic-hospital branch or in zootechnical companies gastrointestinal, locomotion system, breathing, hepatic, thoracic, urogenital, umbilical and mammary diseases of ruminants.

Laboratory diagnostics
In general, laboratory diagnostic tools enable the diagnosis of pathologies that can affect different animal species. At MAPS, this research field pursues the survey and the next detection of new biomarkers in clinical and analytical biochemistry. These could be useful for the diagnosis of frequent pathologies in domestic species.

Imaging diagnostics applied to pets and exotic animals
Imaging diagnostics can also be used in pets and exotic animals. Alongside traditional diagnostic techniques, the group develops expertise in artificial intelligence, and it aims to develop new algorithms and ways to interpret findings effectively. Other focuses include the ecographic contrast tool for neoplasm in cats or dogs and imaging diagnostics for exotic animals. Their possible applications and the results they can obtain represent further areas of interest for the research group.

Dog and cat cardiology
Cats and dogs are the most popular pets, and for this reason they represent the subject of a specific research path at MAPS. In this case, the focus is on canine and feline cardiology, and specifically, the study of different clinical and diagnostic aspects of heart diseases in pets. The research concentrates on degenerative diseases of the mitral valve and on pulmonary hypertension in dogs with different echocardiographic parameters and new hematic biomarkers.

Feline diabetes
This research field is interesting because feline diabetes has much in common with type 2 diabetes, particularly in terms of insulin resistance and the deposition of amyloid in the islets. The physiopathology of feline diabetes is only partially known, however, so it’s still an area to survey and so all the aspects which regard it. This research path focuses on describing alterations in the alpha and beta cells of the pancreatic islets. Their characterisation during diagnosis allows patients to receive more targeted treatments.