One Health, One Literature: Weaving Together Veterinary and Medical
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FOCUS INNOVATION this process and to new ways of thinking. Veterinarians of en consult, cite, and pub- One health, one literature: Weaving lish in medical journals, in part because of their comparative training but also because together veterinary and medical research medical research underpins many of the advances made in veterinary medicine (3). Mary M. Christopher* Physicians and medical researchers may be less familiar with veterinary journals and Translating veterinary research to humans will require a “one literature” approach to break thus may not be aware, for example, that through species barriers in how we organize, retrieve, cite, and publish in biomedicine. cats, like people, get chronic kidney disease and interstitial cystitis or that regeneration Translational research has begun to blur munity, with a single article on animals of mandibular bone in dogs using recombi- interdisciplinary boundaries, but a few, (Tasmanian devils). Physicians, in turn, nant human bone morphogenetic protein 2 including those separating veterinary and might be surprised to learn that medical (rhBMP-2) was a stepping-stone in devel- medical research, persist. Veterinary medi- (but not veterinary) journals include Com- oping ef ective methods for reconstructing cine of ers clinically relevant large animal parative Clinical Pathology, whose Septem- the human jaw. models for a wide range of diseases and ber 2014 issue included articles on dogs, Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, author of treatments in humans, from diabetes in cats rats, chickens, buf alo, sheep, goats, cattle, Zoobiquity, describes: “I, like most physi- to stem cell therapy in horses (1). Even as cockatoos, sturgeon, rabbits, and eastern cians, only interacted with veterinarians spontaneous animal models of human dis- hellbenders (giant salamanders), as well as when my own animals got sick.... listen- eases merge into the mainstream of trans- the occasional human. Categorization of ing to the veterinarians [at the Los Angeles lational medicine, traditional boundaries in the veterinary and medical literature, there- Zoo] on their rounds, [I began to see] that the biomedical literature—peer-reviewed fore, imposes borders that do not always they were dealing with heart failure, and journals and their knowledge domains— coincide with an intended focus. cancer, and behavioral disturbances, and continue to reinforce separation between “It is one thing to talk about the litera- infectious diseases, and really essentially animal and human health by demarcating ture of a f eld. It is quite another to discuss the same diseases that I was taking care of species-specif c contexts for organizing, re- in human patients” (4). Today’s veterinary trieving, citing, and publishing. To facilitate literature is replete with studies that inform communication among scientists, physi- our knowledge of human disease, and with cians, and veterinarians, a paradigm of “one fewer regulatory constraints, medical and on September 8, 2015 literature” can raise cross-species awareness surgical advances in animal patients can and bring together new research communi- sometimes precede those in humans. ties and collaborations that advance trans- Failure to consider the broad literature lational medicine. can result in narrow context, omissions, and errors. An editorial about reporting guide- STUBBORN SILOS: “VETERINARY” lines in Veterinary Record cited Journal of VERSUS “MEDICAL” LITERATURE the American Medical Association (JAMA) What is the dif erence between medi- and British Medical Journal (BMJ) referenc- Downloaded from cal literature and veterinary literature? es to CONSORT but failed to cite REFLECT, T e boundaries of individual “literatures” reporting guidelines essential to the design or discipline-specif c journals are clearly of clinical trials in food animals (5). Cardif def ned in a bibliometric study or meta- et al. (6) described the failure of research- analysis but are less clear in the context of ers to cite consensus reports, diagnostic a research or clinical study. Categorical si- criteria, and terminology published in part los—whether imposed by our own frame by veterinary pathologists for precancer- of reference or by an indexer—can impede ous and cancerous lesions in mice. T ey the healthy and creative cross-exchange of documented numerous studies in which knowledge, and at times such categories can normal glands in mice were misdiagnosed seem arbitrary. Veterinarians might be sur- as skin tumors, papillomas were misdiag- prised to learn, for example, that veterinary nosed as normal epithelium, and runting journals in Scopus include Vaccine, whose One Health. Human and veterinary biomedical was attributed to aberrant genes without June 2015 issue contained research arti- research must forge a single path forward. excluding the much more likely (to a vet- cles on human poliovirus, inf uenza, race/ erinarian) possibility of dental malocclu- ethnicity, perinatal hepatitis, smallpox, the literature used by researchers in that sion. T ese misinterpretations have serious childhood vaccination, and maternal im- f e l d ” ( 2). Translational scientists seek re- implications for the integrity of the multi- lationships and pathways leading from million dollar Knockout Mouse Phenotyp- Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Im- munology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of basic and preclinical research—including ing Program (http://commonfund.nih.gov/ California, Davis, CA 95616, USA. research in animals—toward clinical appli- KOMP2), an NIH Common Fund project CREDIT: B. KAUFMAN/THINKSTOCK CREDIT: *E-mail: [email protected] cations. Publishing silos present a barrier to and part of the International Mouse Pheno- www.ScienceTranslationalMedicine.org 2 September 2015 Vol 7 Issue 303 303fs36 1 FOCUS A B 16 16 14 14 12 12 es es l l c c i i t t r 10 r 10 f a f a o 8 o 8 er er b b m 6 m 6 u u N N 4 4 2 2 0 0 3 4 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 Disease in dogs Experimental dogs Medical and veterinary Medical authors Translational model Canine cells or samples Veterinary authors Fig. 1. A meeting of minds. Physicians and veterinarians were collaborating and publishing together more than a decade ago. There has been sharp growth in translational articles and medical-veterinary collaborations involving canine lymphoma. Articles (n = 103) were retrieved on August 24, 2015, by a PubMed search on “canine lymphoma” (n = 930 from 2000 to 2014) f ltered by “Human” species (n = 146) and excluding irrelevant articles (e.g., in which “canine” modif ed other terms). Each data point is the number of articles in 1 calendar year. (A) Articles relating to human lymphoma. Studies characterizing lymphoma in dogs compared the results to human disease, while studies of canine lymphoma as a translational model empha- sized the application of the f ndings to human disease. (B) Articles sorted by author af liations. Medical af liations include basic science departments. Veterinary af liations include both veterinary schools and private veterinary practices. Af liation may not always match with professional degrees (e.g., veterinarians sometimes work in medical schools). typing Consortium (www.mousephenotype. video-telescope for the surgical removal of Veterinary Record and In Practice, based in org). Journals contribute to such errors by pituitary tumors in dogs. part on synergies between physicians and on September 8, 2015 drawing on narrow pools of peer reviewers veterinarians and following a successful whose expertise does not extend beyond the MEETING POINT: joint issue on the links between human and medical or molecular context to veterinary WHERE THE LITERATURE CONNECTS animal health. pathologists. But responsibility lies with po- Progress has been made in recognizing and Importantly, physicians and veterinar- tential reviewers as well; veterinarians may strengthening connections between vet- ians are collaborating on and publishing in be reluctant to review manuscripts involv- erinary and medical literature. T e World translational research more than ever. Non- ing human disease, and both communities Association of Medical Editors (WAME) Hodgkin’s lymphoma, for example, is one of may be reticent to cross the imaginary line formally welcomed veterinary medical the most common cancers af ecting people Downloaded from between animal and human work. editors into the organization, thanks to and dogs; its diagnosis, molecular charac- Failure to consult or cite literature across the editor-in-chief of Plastic and Recon- terization, and treatment have been greatly the medical-veterinary divide works in structive Surgery and then-secretary of enriched and advanced by comparative both directions. I have heard of veterinary WAME. T e decision recognized the paral- translational research. Based on a PubMed clinical researchers, for example, balking at lel spheres of veterinary and medical edit- search of “canine lymphoma,” f ltered for citing relevant experimental animal work ing, practice, and policy, including peer “Species: Human,” research articles involv- from the “medical literature.” John Young, review, manuscript types, conf icts of inter- ing spontaneous canine lymphoma as a veterinarian and director of comparative est, and reporting guidelines. Veterinary translational model for human lymphoma medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, editors participated in roundtable discus- have tripled since 2000 (Fig. 1A). Further, has been a strong advocate of the intercon- sions on biosecurity and dual-use research the number of papers authored jointly by nectness of medical research and veteri- organized by the U.S. National Institutes medical and veterinary researchers grew nary practice, in part through public out- of Health (NIH) Of ce of Biotechnology from 0 to 1 per year in 2000 to as many as 9 reach for the nonprof t group Americans Activities.