In an eye-opening event, Mississippi State University researchers discovered that Quarter Horses diagnosed with the disease called hereditary equine regional dermal asthenia (HERDA) not only have skin defects but also important eye abnormalities. HERDA is a recessive genetic disease of horses that results in fragile skin that tears easily and heals poorly. “Recent
Horses that have undergone cataract surgery to remove the damaged intraocular (inside the eye) lens now have more appropriate replacement lens options. After cataract surgery horses are still able to see, but without inserting a replacement lens, th
The crooked little bacterium that causes Lyme disease is causing quite a stir in the equine community.
Compared to other species, cloning horses is still in its infancy. Cloning is becoming increasingly popular, yet the health of these artificially-produced foals has not been assessed in detail. “There is very little information on the health of cloned foals currently available,” said Aime Johnson, DVM, Dipl. ACT, from the J.T. Vaughan Large Animal Teaching Hospital at Au
Activity monitors, which are small pedometerlike instruments, have been used in some scientific studies in horses, but they are still not widely used. Scientists have asked whether we’re missing the boat or overestimating the applicability of this technology. In a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dorothy Cimino Brown, DVM, MSCE, Dipl. A
Surgeons from Texas A&M University’s College of Veterinary Medicine have given a facelift to a standard procedure that removes part of a horse’s penis secondary to damage or disease.
Very high doses of vitamin E appear to benefit older horses’ immune systems and could be an inexpensive means of battling “immunosenescence”–the decline in immune function because of the aging process.
According to a research group based in Australia, if you feed your horse spores of the fungus Duddingtonia flagrans, the spores pass harmlessly through the digestive tract and are deposited in the feces along with eggs shed by adult intestinal parasites.
Can you or your veterinarian accurately assess lameness and/or pain in your laminitic horse? This is the question a research team led by Ignacio Vinuela-Fernandez, DVM, MSc, asked, knowing how important it is to manage the pain in horses that develop laminitis. “Laminitis is a common and potentially devastating condition that is a major welfare concern when ineffectively managed,” explained
Equine Insulin Resistance is a reduction in sensitivity to insulin that decreases the ability of glucose to be transported into the body’s cells from the bloodstream.
Lead a veterinarian to a horse with equine Cushing’s disease and he or she will likely try to diagnose the horse by measuring blood levels of adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) in a single sample at a single point in time. Lead researchers from Pegasus Equine Diagnostics Ltd., in Nottingham, United Kingdom to the same horse and they’ll measure ACTH levels over 24 hours at multiple t
Music might be an outburst of the soul (Frederick Delius) but strangles is an outburst of a horse’s lymph nodes, and when you put the two together it amounts to many disappointed fans of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s (RCMP’s) famed Musical Ride. Equine strangles is a highly infectious disease of horses caused by the bacterium Streptococcus equi that causes a thick, greenish nasal discharge,
A specially designed surgical laser can help control fluid pressures in the eyes of horses with glaucoma and help maintain vision, but it does not alleviate the need for the continued use of topical eye medications, according to David A. Wilkie, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVO, and colleagues from the Colleges of Veterinary Medicine at Michigan State University and The Ohio State University (OSU).
Two novel discoveries about how different types of tendons age and “refresh” themselves made by researchers from University College London in the United Kingdom help explain why aging horses are atrisk for tendon injury. Tendons play key roles in locomotion as they are the link between muscles and bones. Ten
A cream containing 5% imiquimod (an immune-boosting drug) effectively and completely treated aural plaques in horses, but side effects of the drug (e.g., inflammatory reaction) limit the cream’s usefulness, reported a group of researchers from Minnesota and California.
Aural plaques are usually white, crusty lesions covering a layer of shiny red skin found on the inside (concave surface) of a
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