Describing age-related structural changes in senior horse hearts is a critical first step in recognizing pathologies. However, it’s too soon to understand those age-related changes’ effects on horse health, researchers say. | Photo: iStock

Fortunately, a “gray-speckle tracking” ultrasound technique is helping scientists better understand, for the first time, how horses’ hearts age. By analyzing the speckling pattern of different shades of gray seen in a series of ultrasound images of the heart, they can detect functional cardiac changes in a living equine that have never before been described in science.

“Echocardiography (ultrasound technology of the heart) reveals a lot of interesting information, and different echocardiographic modes and techniques (like gray-speckle tracking) are possible and useful,” said Heidrun Gehlen, PhD, Dipl. ECEIM, professor at the Equine Clinic in Freie Universitaet, in Berlin, Germany.

In a study of 57 Warmbloods ranging in age from 3 to 30, they detected significant differences in heart structure between older and younger horses by using gray-speckle tracking during ultrasound evaluations. Mainly, the changes affected the left ventricle, reducing its capacity to contract, Gehlen said. These differences were visible starting at around age 15