Implementation of the Disease Database for Cephalopods

Cephalopods have been included in the European Directive (EU Directive 63/2010), that rules the use of animals for scientific purposes. Therefore, animals welfare and health should be assured. Considering cephalopods, only few information are available on their microbiological status, microbiological agents affecting them and the micro-organism host interaction. The Working Group ‘Stress and diseases’ of the COST Action FA1301, CephsInAction, is aimed to classify diseases of cephalopods and establish guidelines for diseases prevention. Diseases can affect animals on different levels: they could show clinical signs (lesions, ulcer, bleeding), behavioural abnormalities (i.e. lethargy, being not attracted by the prey, inking) or can not respond as usual to normal stimuli. Therefore, experiments can be not reproducible, data can be highly affected and the research can be not robust at all. Nowadays, veterinarians, researchers and technical personnel involved in cephalopods projects don’t have many available tools for monitoring the health status and there are only few qualified experts to evaluate the cephalopods well-being. For this reason, we have collected all papers available on clinical reports and experimental infections and we have analysed them for all scientific information reported. Based on these annotations, we propose a cephalopods diseases database, including pathogens, hosts, symptoms, tissues affected, diagnostic methods, survival rate and possible treatment. Filters for pathogens or for symptoms can be applied. Moreover, the database is correlated to one atlas corresponding to lesions and symptoms. Animal care-takers, researchers running experiments and technician will have the tool to discriminate lesions (physiology vs pathology), to recognize and study the pathogen, to reduce the spread of infection and to find possible treatment. Moreover, the personnel responsible for the animal welfare, designated veterinarians and officers will have one possible tool to check if animals are kept in a good health status and according to the authorized experimental project. In the future, this database will be continuously updated with case-reports and to make it available to researchers, designated veterinarians and officers.