Your horse is itchy. You find patches of missing hair on his sides and shoulders. There are gaps in his mane, holes in his tail. Sweet itch? It could be. But then again, maybe not. Belgian researchers say the only way to be sure that your horse is affected by sweet itch is to evaluate him using a confirmed diagnostic test for the disease.

Unfortunately, no such test exists…yet.

Currently, sweet itch is diagnosed by ruling out other causes of itching, such as lice or skin diseases, said Liesbet Peeters, PhD candidate and researcher in the Department of Biosystems at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Heverlee.

But recent studies have led to the hope that, in the near future, a reliable test for diagnosing insect bite hypersensitivity (IBH), also known as summer eczema or sweet itch, will be available to veterinarians. Preliminary experiments with a prototype of such a test have been encouraging, Peeters said