Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Anticoagulant rodenticides are commonly used to control rodents; however, there is a risk of poisoning non-target species, especially predatory and scavenging birds.

Multiple commercially available point-of-care devices measure prothrombin time – a useful biomarker for anticoagulant rodenticide exposure – of humans, and domestic and companion mammals. Researchers evaluated the potential of one commercially available device, the Coag-Sense® PT/INR Monitoring System, to rapidly detect anticoagulant rodenticide exposure of living birds of prey. The Coag-Sense device delivered repeatable measurements on avian blood samples collected from four species of raptors; however, measurements reported by the device from 81 ferruginous hawk nestlings were not correlated to those measured by a one-stage laboratory avian prothrombin time assay. The lack of suitability for detecting potential anticoagulant rodenticide exposure of birds of prey is likely related to the use of a mammalian reagent in the clotting reaction, suggesting that the device may perform better in testing mammalian wildlife.   
 

Dickson, A., Belthoff, J.R., Mitchell, K.A., Smith, B.W., Wallace, Z., Stuber, M.J., Lockhart, J.M., Rattner, B.A., Katzner, T.E., 2020, Evaluating a Rapid Field Assessment System for Anticoagulant Rodenticide Exposure of Raptors: Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00244-020-00763-6 

Get Our News

These items are in the RSS feed format (Really Simple Syndication) based on categories such as topics, locations, and more. You can install and RSS reader browser extension, software, or use a third-party service to receive immediate news updates depending on the feed that you have added. If you click the feed links below, they may look strange because they are simply XML code. An RSS reader can easily read this code and push out a notification to you when something new is posted to our site.

Was this page helpful?