Assessing Coagulation Parameters in Healthy Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) from European and Thai Populations
Issued Date
2022-02-01
Resource Type
eISSN
20762615
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85123801652
Journal Title
Animals
Volume
12
Issue
3
Rights Holder(s)
SCOPUS
Bibliographic Citation
Animals Vol.12 No.3 (2022)
Suggested Citation
Jesus S.A., Schmidt A., Fickel J., Doherr M.G., Boonprasert K., Thitaram C., Sariya L., Ratanakron P., Hildebrandt T.B. Assessing Coagulation Parameters in Healthy Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) from European and Thai Populations. Animals Vol.12 No.3 (2022). doi:10.3390/ani12030361 Retrieved from: https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/20.500.14594/83329
Title
Assessing Coagulation Parameters in Healthy Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) from European and Thai Populations
Other Contributor(s)
Abstract
The Asian elephant population is continuously declining due to several extrinsic reasons in their range countries, but also due to diseases in captive populations worldwide. One of these diseases, the elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus (EEHV) hemorrhagic disease, is very impactful because it particularly affects Asian elephant calves. It is commonly fatal and presents as an acute and generalized hemorrhagic syndrome. Therefore, having reference values of coagulation parameters, and obtaining such values for diseased animals in a very short time, is of great importance. We analyzed prothrombin time (PT), activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT), and fibrinogen concentrations using a portable and fast point-of-care analyzer (VetScan Pro) in 127 Asian elephants from Thai camps and European captive herds. We found significantly different PT and aPTT coagulation times between elephants from the two regions, as well as clear differences in fibrinogen concentration. Nevertheless, these alterations were not expected to have biological or clinical implications. We have also sequenced the coagulation factor VII gene of 141 animals to assess the presence of a previously reported hereditary coagulation disorder in Asian elephants and to investigate the presence of other mutations. We did not find the previously reported mutation in our study population. Instead, we discovered the presence of several new single nucleotide polymorphisms, two of them being considered as deleterious by effect prediction software.