Standardbred racehorse owners got a scare last week when officials quarantined three barns of horses at the Red Mile, a harness track in Lexington, Ky, because of serologic test results that suggested a horse might have had equine infectious anemia (EIA). That quarantine was brief, however, as further tests indicated that the horse was not suffering from an active infection.

Equine infectious anemia is also referred to as swamp fever, mountain fever, slow fever, and malarial fever. It is a very serious blood disease of equids. The virus is transmitted by biting insects, so a carrier horse can be a reservoir of the disease that endangers other horses of being infected.

An owner of a horse with confirmed EIA must quarantine the horse under highly restrictive conditions, possibly for life, or have him euthanatized.

Rusty Ford, Equine Programs Manager at the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, summarized, “There was an animal that falsely tested positive to one of the many tests for EIA, and since that time, we have done extensive diagnostics and have determined the animal to not be infected