The BSVP 2013 Autumn meeting was held in London in conjunction with the International Society of Veterinary Dermatopathologists’ and European Society of Veterinary Pathologists’ meetings. Working with the ESVP/ECVP Local Organising Committee, the BSVP were able to arrange for BSVP members to attend the full meeting at the same rate as for ESVP/ECVP/ACVP members. The ISVD mystery slide session proved immensely popular and became oversubscribed, but by kind agreement with the Local Organising Committee of the ESVP/ECVP Conference BSVP members were able to attend the sessions on both Friday 6th and Saturday 7th September for the one day delegate price.
The ESVP Congress opened with keynote lectures from Australian pathologists dealing with challenges in wildlife surveillance and followed up by Deborah Middleton who gave a fascinating insight into the problems they faced with the Hendra virus outbreaks and the politics and influences behind their rapid push to develop an effective vaccine for horses. This was followed by a choice of workshop on scientific writing, a selection of poster presentations and a parallel session run by the European Pathosurveillance network and all this on the first morning. For those who wanted more there the 140 posters on wide ranging subjects to view. Keynote lectures continued on comparative pathology themes drawing on internationally acclaimed experts to cover Tendon pathology in horses and man; tuberculosis, considering modern developments and also what we may able to learn and apply from historical aspects; pathology of rabbits and hares. Katherine Whitwell gave an account of the factors leading to her single handed documentation of the pathology of sick and dead hares on pastures in the first instance from pasture which cases of equine grass sickness had grazed. Finally on the Saturday morning keynote speakers , Lubna Nasir from Glasgow and Professor Simon Herrington considered the role of papillomaviruses and molecular mechanisms underlying whether viruses cause tumour formation or productive viral replication in people and animals. This last session was followed by the BSVP AGM (the Minutes are now available on the website), which due to the packed program had to coincide with the first two cases of the ISVD mystery slide session.
The ISVD Mystery slide session included some very interesting cases such as concurrent orthopoxvirus and distemper virus infections in a domestic cat and parasympathetic syndrome in a dog with granulomatous neuritis. All the cases generated lively and informative discussions. After lunch Professor Desmond Tobin presented an overview of hair follicle stem cell biology and how knowledge of these populations may significantly contribute to our understanding of healing and regeneration of tissues in the skin and elsewhere in the body. Professor Tobin has provided an excellent précis of his talk in the Proceedings for the meeting which is now available in the downloads section to members by the kind permission of the ISVD.