Data Blitz Highlights

Special thanks to all our presenters at the PRICE Data Blitz! In case you missed it here are our presenters and their amazing research!

Research Assistant Professor
Department of Physical Therapy

Meryl Alappattu, DPT, PhD
Presentation Title: Vulvodynia: clinical phenotypes and treatment outcomes
Summary: Vulvodynia affects about 16% of women and is associated with negative emotional and behavioral factors. There is a need to better phenotype pain sensitivity and distress to provide better treatment options. Currently, treatment is also highly variable leading to variability in outcomes.

Megan McVay, PhD
Presentation Title: Increasing primary care patients’ engagement in evidence-based weight management behaviors
Summary: Most adults with obesity decline to engage in behavioral weight loss treatments when offered. This presentation described a pilot study that focused on increasing engagement in these interventions using a brief, motivational intervention that is based in primary care.

Bonnie Gatson, DVM, DACVA
Presentation Title: Challenges in pain assessment: assessing effective components of pain in animals
Summary: Although pain scales exist for many mammalian species, none thus far have been developed for reptiles, adding a barrier to providing effective assessment of analgesic therapy.  Reptiles, specifically chelonians, have the embryonic structures that develop into higher brain formations that are heavily involved in emotional components of pain in other amniotes. Their laboratory is interested in creating and validating a pain scale for various species of turtles and tortoises, including a component of the pain scale that involves facial changes associated with pain.

Diego A. Portela MV, Phd, DACVAA
Summary: Regional anesthesia (neuraxial and peripheral nerve blocks) is typically used in veterinary patients to provide high-quality perioperative pain relief, preventing the stress response associated with surgery and reducing the need for opioids and other drugs with potential side effects. The future directions of our research will be focused on understanding the impact of anesthesia (with or without using peripheral nerve blocks) on the immune system activity and its effects on patients undergoing oncological surgery.  Additionally, they are in the process of developing regional anesthesia techniques to provide pain relief in dogs suffering from chronic and debilitating osteoarthritic pain. 

Senior Medical Director
Lap of Love Veterinary Hospice and In Home Euthanasia
Courtesy Lecturer
UF College of Veterinary Medicine

Sheilah Robertson, BVMS (Hons), PhD, DACVAA, DECVAA, DACAW, DECAWBM (WSEL), MRCVS
Summary: Although rare, osteosarcoma is the most common bone tumor in humans and primarily affects children after the first decade of life during periods of skeletal growth. Survival rates for this cancer have not improved at the same rate as other cancers in humans.Many induced rodent models exist and have produced important information on the biology of this tumor.The disease is spontaneous in dogs and occurs at a higher rate than in humans; dogs are large mammals and more accurately recapitulate the natural progression of the disease seen in young people.Because the tumor shows many similarities between the two species, the dog is a valuable model for humans. treatments.