Parasitology VPTH 603

Trichuris vulpis

CORE VETERINARY PARASITOLOGY

VPTH 603

Fall 2007

General Information

You will need your microscope for every laboratory session and for both lab tests.

Each laboratory comprises 3 parts: 1. Demonstrations, 2. AV material and 3. bench work. Please note that the objectives of the lab are listed at the beginning of each handout. There is a checklist at the end of each unit to aid you in gauging your progress. Attainment of the laboratory objectives, reinforced by the checklists, is the best preparation for the lab quizzes.

Demonstrations: These are set up as a series of stations (10 - 25) in MDL 11. They consist of gross specimens of the parasites and pathology specimens, microscope slides of the diagnostic stages and histopathology. Because of the limited number of specimens and the large number of students the DEMOS often take the longest to observe. (Copies of the DEMO cards can be found on the CAL web-page). At the end of each set of DEMOS there will be one station that will be set-up in the same manner as the Lab Quiz questions will be. The purpose of this demo is to familiarize you with the form used on the quiz and to let you test yourself on the material you just completed. The answer to this demo question will be on the reverse side of the demo card.

Audio/Visual: This portion of the laboratory consists of video tapes and the web sites. The videos are available in the AV room for viewing before or after the lab. The video tapes cover material from the labs and lectures and in many cases show you the effects of parasites on the animals in field situations. The viewing of the videos is optional and what you are taught in lecture and lab takes precedent over what might be said in the video.

The purpose of the website is to review the material you have gone over (or will go over) in the lab. The website also serves (along with your notes) as the major source of review material for the Laboratory Tests. The website can be accessed through the CAL site (Pathobiology Projects):

Parasitology Lab and Life Cycles

Diagnosis of Veterinary Endoparasitic Infections (Good for reviewing parasites by host.)

Note: the labs can be long and if you feel you have to skip part of the material, the CAL sites and/or the videos, as they are available at any time, are the logical part to skip. Fresh or bulk specimens and demonstrations should receive highest priority in budgeting your time.

Bench Work: This part of the lab is designed to allow you to run the different diagnostic tests needed to identify parasites, as well as providing an opportunity to study the diagnostic stages of parasites. Some of the slides you will be told to view will come from a Student Slide Box (SSB) which will be shared by a group of 3 to 4 students. The slide box will be given out in the first lab, be sure you or one of your partners picks it up during the first hour of this lab.

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Housekeeping

Wear your lab coat with name tag to every laboratory session.

Clean up your area before you leave the lab. Everything you used is to be returned to the proper bucket (on the cart in the back of MDL 11) for cleaning.

Any used fluids (saturated salt with feces, etc.) are to be flushed down the drain.

Return bottles and unused slides and cover slips to the end of the bench.

DO NOT EAT OR DRINK IN THE MDLs.

Store your student slide box in an upright position (like a book on a shelf).

Occasionally we will be using live infectious material, when we do so we will let you know. However, it is safer if you treat all the samples as potentially infectious to humans.

Infectious Waste Procedures:

Use sharps containers for:

ALL needles and syringes

Broken or unbroken glass/plasticware (including pipettes) that have been in contact with infectious agents; or was used in animal care or treatment. Includes loops, slides and coverslips.

In general, anything that came in contact with feces or blood that may cut or puncture the plastic autoclave bag should be disposed of as a sharp.

Use autoclavable infectious waste bags for:

ALL contaminated (came in contact with blood or feces) items that are not considered sharps. This would include the gloves you wore. Please stack your cups you used to prepare the fecal float next to the autoclave bag and we will place them in the bag later (we autoclave the bags and then pack them into a box for disposal at a per box cost, therefore, the less space the bag takes up, the more bags we can pack into a box).

NEVER EAT OR DRINK IN THE MDLs !!!!!!!

General Map of MDL-11

(as set-up for a Parasitology Laboratory Session)

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Course Policy

Weighting of exams and graded exercises

1st Progressive Exam............22%

1st Lab Practical......................9%

2nd Progressive Exam..........22%

Lab case studies.....................2%*

Lab Final.................................14%

Lecture Final..........................31%

* The Case Studies will be graded Pass/Fail and calculated in your total as: Pass=100%, Fail=0%.

Comments on final exams:

Are they comprehensive? You'll note that lectures 34-46 concentrate on clinical parasitisms from a host-oriented viewpoint. These lectures assume a working knowledge of the life cycles and biology of the parasites in question gleaned from the first portion of the course. The written final will stress material from these lectures along with material on the protozoa. However, in so doing it will also assume a requisite knowledge of the biology of the parasites in question. The last 2 laboratories are a review of the parasites you learned about this year presented in a host oriented manner. Thus, the final lab exam will be comprehensive, but will concentrate on material on which you haven't been tested (Labs 6-10).

Grade adjustments on exams:

In cases where the student takes exception with the marking of an exam based on content, he or she is invited to submit a written rebuttal along with a copy of the graded question(s) to the Course Director (Dr. Lok) within two weeks of the time that exams are returned after grading. These rebuttals will be reviewed by the faculty, and students will be informed in due course of the action taken on their request for grade adjustment. Simple errors in computing total points awarded on exams should be brought to the attention of the Course Director as soon as possible.

Adjuncts to course material:

Note service: Course faculty generally support the student note service, and individual faculty members may agree to correct drafts of lecture transcripts. However, in extending this courtesy, faculty members do not assume responsibility for the content of the transcripts, and note service notes do not constitute an official record of the course content.

Presentations by non-faculty speakers: Frequently, representatives from the pharmaceutical industry make presentations outside of class time on applications of their products to parasite control, and these presentations may include basic background information on parasite biology or parasitic disease. This material has not necessarily been reviewed or endorsed by the Faculty in Parasitology at the University of Pennsylvania and is not a part of the curriculum of the School of Veterinary Medicine.

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