Researchers recently revealed that Cushing’s disease is a major contributing factor to laminitis among horses in a primary care veterinary practice, and that the median age of laminitic Cushing’s horses was 15 1/2 years–disproving that this problem is just an “old-horse” disease. Along with his co-authors, Mark T. Donaldson, VMD, Dipl. ACVIM, a field service veterinarian at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center, also said that some horses with laminitis might have Cushing’s, also called pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction, without displaying conspicuous characteristics typically associated with the disorder.

Cushing’s disease is caused by degeneration of the hypothalamic dopaminergic neurons, which are those in the hypothalamus (which controls metabolism by exerting influence on the pituitary gland) using dopamine as their neurotransmitter. The pituitary and adrenal glands in turn produce abnormal amounts of hormones that play a vital role in regulating metabolism and inflammatory and immune responses