Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu khoa học quốc tế về bệnh thú y đề tài: Biological Rhythm in Livestock | J. Vet. Sci. 2002 3 3 145-157 JOURNAL OF Veterinary Science Review Biological Rhythm in Livestock Piccione Giuseppe and Caola Giovanni Dipartimento di Morfologia Biochimica Fisiologia e Produzioni animali Sezione di Fisiologia Veterinaria Facolta di Medicina Veterinaria dell Universita degli Studi di Messina Polo Universitario dell Annunziata-98168-Messina Italia Received July 2 2002 Accepted August 30 2002 Abstract The animal time structure is a basic fact of life no matter if one wants to study it or not. The timedependent mostly rhythmic and thus to a certain degree predictable variations of biochemical and physiological functions and of sensitivity and resistance to many environmental agents are often quite large and offer not only new insight into animal physiology and pathology but also diagnostic possibilities and therapeutic advantages. Chronobiology chronophysiology and its subspecialities like chronopharmacology and chronotherapy will certainly play an important role in the clinical medicine of the future. Successful application of chronobiology to veterinary clinical medicine however depends critically on a thorough knowledge of its basic principles. Key words biological rhythm chronophysiology domestic animals. Introduction Living matter and the evolving organisms were exposed to the earth s revolution around the sun with its periodicity of day and night of light and darkness with the periodic changes in the length of the daily light and dark span with the climatic changes of seasons. Many periodic functions ranging in the length of their cycle from milliseconds as in the activity of single neurons to seconds such as the heart and respiration rate and to months such as the oestrus cycles in mammals have no known environmental counterpart. Three examples of biological rhythms are illustrated in figure 1. Some biochemical and biophysical mechanisms creating or maintaining periodic functions at the cellular level are related to the genetic material in .
