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Is Vitiligo in Horses Related to Copper Deficiency?
Q. My horse has developed white pigmentation around one of his eyes. A friend mentioned that this might be due to a copper deficiency. Is that true?
A. Vitiligo is a skin condition that’s essentially cosmetic in horses. It occurs in other mammals, including dogs, pigs, and people, and is an autoimmune condition that targets and kills the melanocytes in the skin.
Melanocytes are the skin’s pigment-forming cells, so when they die the skin becomes white or unpigmented. Although first described about 3,500 years ago in people, vitiligo wasn’t mentioned in scientific literature about horses until 1931, and multiple scientific reports didn’t occur until the 1960s
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Written by:
Clair Thunes, PhD
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