More than 130 equine practitioners and professionals from 10 states attended the Advances in Equine Neurological Diseases Symposium, a seven-hour program presented by the University of Kentucky Equine Initiative and Gluck Equine Research Center on Dec. 6. Featured topics included equine protozoal myeloencephalitis (EPM), wobbler syndrome, and the neurologic form of herpesvirus.

Steve Reed, DVM, Dipl. ACVIM, of Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, was a moderator and organizer of the symposium, along with Dan Howe, PhD, of the Gluck Equine Research Center; Ed Squires, PhD, Dipl. ACT (Hon.), director of the Equine Initiative and executive director of the Gluck Equine Research Foundation; and Jenny Blandford, Gluck Foundation Coordinator at the Gluck Center.

EPM

Howe and Robert MacKay, BVSc, PhD, Dipl. ACVIM, professor of Large Animal Medicine at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, discussed EPM, an illness that strikes horses by way of the opossum. Opossums carry the parasite Sarcocystis neurona, the causative agent of EPM, and pass it to horses, usually by infecting feed (or water) with their parasite-laden scat. After infecting a horse, the parasite can invade and cause damage to the gray matter of the spinal cord