Devendra Shah Lab

Breakthrough: Fly species may boost screwworm eradication efforts It has been more than 60 years since we faced a widespread threat f...

Federal rulemaking signals sweeping changes for accreditors like AVMA COE The Education Department has recently proposed rules for higher education accreditors such as the AVMA Council on Education. The changes, which have yet to be finalized, largely seek to sever or disrupt long-established relationships that programmatic accrediting agencies have with related professio...

Lessons From a Lifetime in Veterinary Medicine A career spanning practice, research and industry taught Linda Rhodes that success isn't measured by titles, but by purpose, curiosity and balance.

Good read from AVMA on client stability and retention among pet owners. Besides practice management, data like this can also be useful for clinical practice and in training DVM students on what AAVMC calls spectrum of care thinking. Left a comment on the piece with an example and thought around how this may fit within the lens of Evidence Based Veterinary Medicine. Curious what others think.

Chart of the month: Knowing your client base Where pet owners live—and whether they own or rent—can influence both access to veterinary care and how clients connect with your practice over time.

Proud to share our latest publication, now out in , "A systematic review and meta-analysis of biofilm-forming Salmonella across the farm-to-fork continuum".

How does this research advance food safety?

Biofilm-forming Salmonella aren't a bigger threat because they cause worse disease, biofilm doesn't increase virulence. They're a threat because they're survivors. Once Salmonella forms a biofilm, it becomes far more tolerant of disinfectants, sanitizers, desiccation, and antimicrobials, letting it persist on equipment and in processing environments long after routine cleaning, and repeatedly contaminate food moving through the chain.

Pulling together 88 studies and over 4,300 Salmonella isolates from animals, food, environments, and humans, this paper shows a clear, statistically significant pattern: biofilm-positive NTS prevalence was lowest in animal reservoirs (~58%) and rose steadily through food (~68%), and human sources (~73%).

The data don't trace a direct transmission path from a specific animal to a specific food to a specific human case, but the progressive, step-wise increase across the continuum is exactly what you'd expect to see if biofilm-forming strains are, in fact, the ones surviving each stage and moving forward. It's strong evidence that this enrichment is likely happening in the field, not just a statistical artifact.

This raises a practical question the field hasn't seriously asked:

why don't we routinely test whether Salmonella isolated during outbreak investigations, or recovered from food processing and production environments, is biofilm-forming? Doing so could flag high-persistence strains early, help predict contamination risk, and justify enhanced sanitation and biosecurity measures where they're needed most.

Our laboratory is already building toward that translationalsolution. We have developed a rapid, serotype-independent FTIR-based assay to detect biofilm-positive Salmonella. Check out our recent paper on this new discovery here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.onehlt.2025.101004

A companion web app for widespread adoption is coming soon, part of our broader effort to strengthen surveillance tools that protect the U.S. food supply.

Great work, Dr.Asmita Shrestha!

Prevalence of Biofilm-Forming Non-Typhoidal Salmonella Across the Farm-to-Fork Continuum: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) remains a major cause of foodborne illness worldwide, and its persistence along the food-production continuum poses a significant public health challenge. Biofilm formation is an adaptive mechanism that enhances NTS survival and persistence outside the primary animal r...

U.S. Screwworm Cases Climb to 27 as Texas Quarantines Expand U.S. New World screwworm cases have risen to 27, prompting expanded Texas quarantines and continued sterile fly releases to contain the outbreak. The post U.S. screwworm cases climb to 27 as Texas qua...

During the 1990s, I often treated maggot-infested wounds in cattle and goats in rural communities around my home town, using medicinal . I recall, the maggots would egress from the wound within minutes. The existing literature extensively documents the use of turpentine oil as a cost-effective yet highly potent treatment for fly and maggot infestations in both animal and human subjects.

Turpentine Uses, Benefits & Dosage Learn about the potential benefits of Turpentine including contraindications, adverse reactions, toxicology, pharmacology and historical usage.

Colorado State University helping to address veterinary shortage with opening of new vet teaching hospital As the country is facing a veterinary care shortage, Colorado State University is helping to grow the local workforce and expand world-class care to local pets and animals.

Congratulations to Dr.Asmita Shrestha for successfully defending her doctoral dissertation research today in the at !

Asmita's dissertation tackled biofilm formation in Non-typhoidal Salmonella enterica, a major driver of foodborne illness worldwide. Her work spans a meta-analysis of biofilm prevalence across farm-to-fork continuum, a new FTIR spectroscopy detection platform, an improved machine learning classifier achieving 97% accuracy in biofilm detection deployed as a public web application, and a global biofilm transcriptome uncovering the conserved gene expression programs that govern biofilm competence across serovars.

Her research advances both our fundamental understanding of Salmonella persistence and the practical tools available for food safety and public health. We are incredibly proud of everything she has accomplished. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Asmita Shrestha!

"If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else" Anonymous