Paul C Mills

University of Queensland | UQ · School of Veterinary Science

A knee phantom with realistic dielectric and anatomical properties has been fabricated using proper molds and equivalent mixtures. The fabricated phantom is based on a composite material of polymer and additive materials such as aluminium-oxide, and graphite. These materials are selected to achieve high dielectric properties and realistic distribut...

In the horse, inappropriate management and training, as well as pain, frustration, fear and anxiety can result in undesirable behaviours. Common undesirable behaviours include pawing, striking, rearing, kicking, bolting, bucking, shying, napping, freezing, biting and bite threats, as well as a range of oral and locomotive stereotypic behaviours. Ma...

Precise dielectric properties (DPs) of biological tissues play an essential role in the development of non-invasive microwave diagnostic and therapeutic systems. There is much information in the literature about DPs of healthy tissues, however, there is a gap in DPs of unhealthy tissues and DPs of tissues at different ages. DPs of any healthy tissu...

An epizootic of coccidiosis in free-ranging green turtles (Chelonia mydas) occurred in Australia in 1991 and the parasites were thought to be Caryospora cheloniae. Recurring outbreaks over an increased geographic range followed. We used medical records and temporal and spatial data of turtles diagnosed with coccidiosis between 1991 and 2014 to char...

Blood flukes of the family Spirorchiidae are important disease agents in marine turtles. The family is near cosmopolitan in distribution. Twenty-nine marine species across 10 genera are currently recognized, but taxonomic problems remain and it is likely that more species will be discovered. Spirorchiids infect the circulatory system, where they an...

Background Outdoor, early-biting, zoophagic behaviours by Anopheles farauti (s.s.) can compromise the effectiveness of bed nets for malaria control. In the Western Pacific region, pigs and dogs represent significant alternative blood sources for mosquitoes. Treating these animals with endectocides may impact mosquito survival and complement control...

The changes in dielectric properties of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) can be utilized in diagnosis of cognitive diseases. The aim of this paper is to investigate the employability of an implantable antenna to concurrently operate as a radiator and sensor of the dielectric properties of CSF. The antennas exploit narrow slits and gaps as capacitors for s...

Objective: Near-field inductive-coupling link can establish a reliable power source to a batteryless implantable medical device based on Faraday's law of induction. Methods: In this paper, the design, modeling, and experimental verification of an inductive-coupling link between an off-body loop antenna and a 0.9 three-dimensional (3-D) bowtie br...

Over the last two decades, technological advancements in the field of proteomics have advanced our understanding of the complex biological systems of living organisms. Techniques based on mass spectrometry (MS) have emerged as powerful tools to contextualise existing genomic information and to create quantitative protein profiles from plasma, tissu...

Background: Delayed central conduction times in the auditory brainstem have been observed in Mexico City (MC) healthy children exposed to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone (O3) above the current United States Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) standards. MC children have α synuclein brainstem accumulation and medial superior olivary...

Augmented breaths, also known as sighs, constitute the normal repertoire of breathing in freely behaving humans and animals. The breaths are believed to be generated by neurones in the preBötzinger complex but under modulatory influence from higher brain centres, particularly in the limbic system due to the strong correlations between the expressio...

Globally, tropical and subtropical regions have experienced an increased frequency and intensity in extreme weather events, ranging from severe drought to protracted rain depressions and cyclones, these coincided with an increased number of marine turtles subsequently reported stranded. This study investigated the relationship between environmental...

Background: Unlike humans, there is currently no publicly available reference mass spectrometry-based circulating acellular proteome data for sheep, limiting the analysis and interpretation of a range of physiological changes and disease states. The objective of this study was to develop a robust and comprehensive method to characterise the circul...

Background: Topical antimicrobial preparations are of utmost importance in treating suspected and confirmed meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus pseudintermedius (MRSP) infections due to the increasing incidence of widespread resistance to systemic antimicrobials. Lasalocid is active against MRSP in vitro and this may become an important topical an...

There is limited published information about disease in wild sea snakes and no standardized guideline for postmortem examination of sea snakes. Identifying causes of morbidity and mortality of marine vertebrate species has been pivotal to understanding disease factors implicated in stranding events and assisting with the formulation of conservation...

Reasons for performing study: Pilot investigations have suggested that a novel, long-acting, injectable, intra-muscular formulation of omeprazole (LA-OMEP) can induce acid suppression for up to 7 days following a single injection. Objectives: To investigate the pharmacodynamics and assess the clinical efficacy of the LA-OMEP formulation. Study...

Developing microwave systems for biomedical applications requires accurate dielectric properties of biological tissues for reliable modeling before prototyping and subject testing. Dielectric properties of tissues decrease with age due to the change in their water content, but there are no detailed age-dependent data, especially for young tissue-li...

Rehabilitation of marine turtles in Queensland has multifaceted objectives. It treats individual animals, serves to educate the public, and contributes to conservation. We examined the outcome from rehabilitation, time in rehabilitation, and subsequent recapture and restranding rates of stranded marine turtles between 1996 and 2013 to determine if...

Duration of care before outcome. Short term care 0–7 days, Medium term care 7–28 days, Long term care >28 days

Raw data used for this study

Duration in care before outcome for each reported cause of stranding

Spirorchiid blood fluke infections affect endangered turtle populations globally, and are reported as a common cause of mortality in Queensland green sea turtles. Both the flukes and their ova are pathogenic and can contribute to the stranding or death of their host. Of particular interest are ova-associated brain lesions, which have been associate...

Background: Esomeprazole warrants further investigation as a treatment for Equine Gastric Ulcer Syndrome. Objectives: To investigate the duration of intra-day acid suppression achieved with two doses of esomeprazole under two dietary conditions. Study design: A 4-way cross-over design. Methods: Six adult Thoroughbreds instrumented with percu...

Marine turtles are caught and slaughtered for consumption as part of traditional indigenous community harvest in Australia as well as in many countries in which marine turtles can be found. However, changes to the Animal Care and Protection Act 2001 in 2012 resulted in Australian indigenous hunters becoming potentially liable to prosecution for usi...

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 1B. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 8A. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 3A. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 5B. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 6A. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 9A. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 2A. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 4B. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 7A. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 10A. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Summarized histological cross section of hind brains and spinal cords in Turtles 1 to 11. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 1A. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 3B. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 4A. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 5A. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Histological cross section of hind brain and spinal cord in Turtle 10B. H&E 10x. (PDF)

Introduction: Spirorchiid blood flukes are globally important parasites of sea turtles, playing a role in strandings and mortalities. Mixed infections are common and ova are found in most host tissues, causing inflammatory responses ranging from mild to severe. However, ova cannot be morphologically identified to species level, making detection of...

Dielectric properties of dead Greyhound female dogs? brain tissues at different ages were measured at room temperature across the frequency range of 0.3?3?GHz. Measurements were made on excised tissues, in vitro in the laboratory, to carry out dielectric tests on sample tissues. Each dataset for a brain tissue was parametrized using the Cole?Cole e...

Blood flukes are among the most common disease causing pathogens infecting vertebrates, including humans and some of the world's most globally endangered fauna. Spirorchiid blood flukes are parasites of marine turtles, and are associated with pathology, strandings and mor-talities worldwide. Their ova embolize in tissues and incite significant infl...

Introduction: There is an unrivalled need to apply emerging next-generation tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) technologies to explore the fine aspects of injury with the goal of discovering protein biomarkers using animal models. This abstract concerns the application of a novel encyclopaedic peptide spectral library as a proof-of-principle for dete...

Background: Conflicting data are presented in the current literature regarding the efficacy of omeprazole for suppressing gastric acidity in the horse. Objectives: The objective of this study was to investigate the duration of intraday acid suppression achieved with two doses of omeprazole under two different dietary conditions. Study design:...

Emily K Cook, Nana Satake, Ben W Sykes, Emma L Bennett, Paul C Mills School of Veterinary Sciences, The University of Queensland, Gatton, Queensland, Australia Abstract: Investigation into the pharmacokinetic profile of esomeprazole was conducted using eight healthy dogs after intravenous (IV) and oral (po) administration in a two-part randomized c...

This study aimed to investigate the effect of diet and dose on the pharmacokinetics of omeprazole in the horse. Six horses received two doses (1 and 4 mg/kg) of omeprazole orally once daily for 5 days. Each dose was evaluated during feeding either a high-grain/low-fibre (HG/LF) diet or an ad libitum hay (HAY) diet in a four-way crossover design. Pl...

Four sea snakes (two Hydrophis major, one Hydrophis platurus, one Hydrophis elegans) were found washed ashore on different beaches in the Sunshine Coast region and Fraser Island in Queensland, Australia between 2007-2013. Each snake had multiple granulomas and locally extensive regions of pallor evident in the hypaxial and intercostal musculature a...

Microsporidia and non-microsporidia sequence alignment. (FAS)

In the spring of 2014, mass mortalities among wild green sea turtles occurred off the coast of south-east Queensland, Australia. The suspected causative agent was Caryospora cheloniae, an eimeriid coccidian implicated in previous epizootics. Necropsies were undertaken on a subset of 11 dead turtles, with subsequent histopathology and molecular anal...

Purpose Inflammation may contribute to the pathogenesis of specific cardiovascular diseases, but it is uncertain if mediators released during the inflammatory process will affect the continued efficacy of drugs used to treat clinical signs of the cardiac disease. We investigated the role of the complement 5a receptor 1 (C5aR1/CD88) in the cardiac r...

In-water monitoring of marine vertebrates is usually expensive while the use of stranding data can be used to provide a cost-effective estimation of disease and mortality. Strandings for Queensland are recorded in a web based database (StrandNet) managed by the Queensland Government’s Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (EHP). Data re...

Biochemical and haematological parameters are increasingly used to diagnose disease in green sea turtles. Specific clinical pathology tools, such as plasma protein electrophoresis analysis, are now being used more frequently to improve our ability to diagnose disease in the live animal. Plasma protein reference intervals were calculated from 55 cli...

Intra-gastric pH monitoring is an important tool in the validation of acid suppressive drugs. To date, several methods of monitoring intra-gastric pH in the horse have been described. However significant limitations are present in the existing models. This article describes the placement of a percutaneous gastrotomy (PEG) tube secured with a button...

No validated laminitis drug therapy exists, yet pharmaceutical agents with potential for laminitis prevention have been identified. Many of these are impractical for systemic administration but may be effective if administered locally. This study compared intraosseous infusion of the distal phalanx (IOIDP) with systemic intravenous constant rate in...

This article presents original research to investigate the relationship between integumentary composition and predictive thermal capacity. The authors suggest that cold stress syndrome (CSS) is unlikely to occur in dugongs, a claim that is at odds with a recent study from our group where we described the local appearance of mortality cases consiste...

Omeprazole is widely used in the treatment of equine gastric ulcer syndrome. To date, little is known about the relative pharmacokinetics of the different formulations making comparisons between products difficult. The objectives of the study were to investigate the relative pharmacokinetics of five commercially available formulations of omeprazole...

The use of transdermal gel medications in cats has become popular in veterinary medicine due to the ease of administration compared to oral medication. The research to support systemic absorption of drugs after transdermal gel administration and the preferred skin region to apply these drugs in cats is limited. The aim of this study was to characte...

The use of transdermal medications in cats has become popular in veterinary medicine due to the ease of administration compared to oral medication. However, the research to support systemic absorption of drugs applied to the pinna after transdermal administration in cats is limited. The aim of this study was to characterize the percutaneous absorpt...

The objectives of this study were to investigate the impact of formulation (enteric coated and buffered) and feeding on pharmacokinetic variables associated with the oral administration of omeprazole in the horse. Six thoroughbred racehorses were studied in a crossover design. Each received 2 g of an enteric coated or buffered formulation in both t...

Pharmaceutical agents with potential for laminitis prevention have been identified. Many of these, including the MMP inhibitor marimastat, are impractical for systemic administration. This study compared local delivery of marimastat by regional limb perfusion (RLP) to systemic intravenous bolus dosing (SIVB), and established whether RLP results in...

Objectives To determine if methimazole applied in a transdermal formulation to the internal pinna will cross to the external pinna in an in vitro Franz cell model. Methods The ears from six cats were harvested soon after death. Whole ears were mounted onto Franz-type diffusion cells with the stratum corneum of the inner pinnae uppermost. A commer...

Adult blood flukes of the genera Hapalotrema Looss, 1899 and Learedius Price, 1934 were collected from turtles off Queensland and the Hawaiian Islands. Specimens were identified as Hapalotrema pambanensis Mehrotra, 1973, H. synorchis Luhman, 1935, H. postorchis Rao, 1976 and Learedius learedi Price, 1934 on the basis of morphology. No major morphol...

The histological features of feline hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) have been well documented, but there are no reports describing the histological features in mild pre-clinical disease, since cats are rarely screened for the disease in the early stages before clinical signs are apparent. Histological changes at the early stage of the disease in...

Marine snakes of the subfamily Hydrophiinae are obligate ocean dwellers, unlike their amphibious counterparts, the sea kraits (Laticaudinae), and as such they are often referred to as 'true' sea snakes. This specialization means that the presence of a true sea snake on a beach is atypical and likely indicates disease or injury. Traumatic injuries s...

The objectives were to document the pharmacokinetics of intravenous, enteric-coated oral and plain oral omeprazole in fasted horses and to investigate the impact of feeding on the bioavailability of an enteric-coated omeprazole. Twelve horses received four treatments: intravenous omeprazole (0.5 mg/kg) in the fasted state (IV-Fasted), enteric-coate...

An investigation into the health of green turtles was undertaken near Gladstone, Queensland, in response to a dramatic increase in stranding numbers in the first half of 2011. A total of 56 live turtles were subject to clinical examination and blood sampling for routine blood profiles, and 12 deceased turtles underwent a thorough necropsy examinati...