While your veterinarian is stitching wounds, delivering foals, and monitoring colics, researchers from around the world are publishing research that often advances the collective of horse health care. So to bring busy practitioners up to speed on the top studies in a variety of fields, a panel of veterinarians presents a news-type program each year at the annual American Association of Equine Practitioners’ Convention.

Pat McCue, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACT, a professor of equine theriogenology at Colorado State University’s Equine Reproduction Laboratory, described the reproduction studies he deemed most important and useful to a veterinary audience during the Kester News Hour. This year’s lecture took place Dec. 7 at the convention, held in Nashville, Tenn.

Two of those studies featured research from the University of Kentucky’s own Barry A. Ball, DVM, PhD, Dip. ACT, the Albert G. Clay Endowed Chair in Equine Reproduction at the Maxwell H. Gluck Equine Research Center, and Mats Troedsson, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACT, ECAR, chair of the Department of Veterinary Science and director of the Maxwell H. Gluck Equine Research Center.

McCue described Ball’s study results, which showed that blood anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) concentrations appear to be a good biomarker for detecting granulosa-cell tumors (GCTs, the most common type of ovarian tumor). Although mostly benign, GCTs can prevent pregnancy and cause stallionlike behavior and other problems in mares