Horses moving faster than a walk could be at greater risk of developing gastric ulcers. Alfred Merritt, DVM, MS, and Mireia Lorenzo-Figueras, DVM, recently discovered that changes in gastric tension during intense exercise can push acidic stomach contents up into the vulnerable, squamous-cell-lined portion of the stomach–a circumstance that hints at why ulcers often develop or worsen when horses are in intensive training. This work done at the Island Whirl Equine Colic Research Laboratory at the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine has provided another piece of the complex puzzle that is equine ulcers. It is a follow-up to the work that described the ability of the equine stomach to adapt to meals of various sizes and compositions.

Merritt and Lorenzo-Figueras used an ingenious method to explore what happens in the equine stomach of a live, exercising horse. The University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine is fortunate to have at its disposal three cannulated research horses–animals with permanent external access to their stomachs. The three Thoroughbreds (two mares and a gelding) had Mylar bags, similar to the balloons sold at some florists’ equipped with barostats, temporarily inserted in the proximal portions of their stomachs before exercising on a treadmill