Dr. John Haffner said it’s always important to take clinical signs and the owner’s history of the horse into consideration along with the laboratory data to make a “proper diagnosis” of PPID. | Photo by Sarah Church Graham

New details about test hormone storage, whole blood storage, plasma storage, and the effects of season and stress on testing can help practitioners organize their PPID testing procedures without compromising results, said John Haffner, DVM, a professor at the Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) Horse Science Center, in Murfreesboro.

Haffner and his fellow researchers performed five studies on horses they’d identified as having or not having PPID to answer questions they’d encountered themselves as practitioners in the field. He presented their results at the 2020 American Association of Equine Practitioners’ Convention, held virtually.

The questions they aimed to answer pertain to the practicalities of PPID testing in a real-world setting of equine veterinarians in the field, he said