Veterinary research in horses encompasses the study of diseases, health management, and medical treatments specific to equine species. This field investigates various aspects of horse health, including infectious diseases, metabolic disorders, and musculoskeletal conditions. Researchers focus on understanding the pathophysiology of equine ailments, developing diagnostic tools, and evaluating therapeutic interventions. The study of horse health also involves examining preventive measures such as vaccination protocols and nutritional management to promote overall well-being. This page collects peer-reviewed research studies and scholarly articles that explore the diverse areas of veterinary science related to horses, providing insights into disease mechanisms, treatment strategies, and advancements in equine healthcare.
Rodrigues APDC, Pozzobon R, De Bastiani G, De La Côrte FD, Azevedo MDS.Lameness, which arises from functional or structural changes in the limbs or axial skeleton, causes asymmetry in the movement of the equine head and/or pelvis. This study aimed to investigate the lameness patterns of horses that underwent lameness examination or monitoring during the years 2016 to 2020. This retrospective study used data from the lameness examination, evaluated using an objective assessment with body-mounted wireless inertial sensors. The lameness examination comprised clinical history, static inspection, palpation, gait evaluation (for which the animals were equipped with a w...
B B, G M, L G, G A, B B, T F, A G, D B, A K, G T, G S, A B, M F, L R.Equine penile tumors are common in horses and are often related to infection with equine papillomavirus type 2 (EcPV2). This study investigated the immune cell infiltrate (ICI) of these tumors in horses, focusing on the role of EcPV2. Using multiplex immunohistochemistry (mIHC) for CD3, CD20, and IBA-1 and immunohistochemistry (IHC) for FoxP3, 27 horses with papillomas (5/27), in situ carcinomas (CISs) (3/27), and squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) (19/27) were evaluated. Eighteen cases tested positive for EcPV2 by either or both in situ hybridization (ISH) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (18...
Sayler B, Manship AJ, Davis J, Taylor J, Gilliam L.Chloramphenicol is a broad-spectrum antibiotic used in equine practice. It is known to produce adverse effects of hyporexia/anorexia after oral administration. Administration per rectum (PR) could mitigate the appetite suppression seen with oral administration and allow its use in horses unable to receive oral medications. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the relative bioavailability of chloramphenicol administered PR or via nasogastric tube (NGT) and determine relevant pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic parameters and metabolic ratios. Ten healthy, adult horses were administered chl...
Wienhold S, Bär L, Ringleb Z, Zirpel V, Gomolla A, Denk BF, Volkmer N, Gaertner RJ, Klink ESC, Pruessner JC.In any therapeutic setting, the outcome depends in part on the therapeutic alliance, characterized by mutual understanding, empathy and trust among the participants. This also manifests through physiological synchronization (PS) processes involving breathing, heart and brain. This study examined the dynamics of heart rate variability (HRV) synchronization patterns during horse-assisted therapy. We explored the correlations between the therapist's horse preference, levels of early life adversity (ELA), and PS relationships within and across dyads of participants, therapists, and therapy horses....
Franco JJ, Gonzálvez M, Cano-Terriza D, Barbero-Moyano J, Jose-Cunilleras E, Alguacil E, García J, García-Bocanegra I.Equine viral arteritis is a notifiable infectious disease with sanitary and economic implications at a global scale. A cross-sectional serosurvey was performed to determine the exposure of equids to the Alphaarterivirus equid [Equine Arteritis Virus (EAV)] in three regions in western Europe. Serum samples from 1425 equids (1196 horses, 104 donkeys, and 125 mules/hinnies) from Catalonia (northeastern Spain), Andalusia (southern Spain) and southeastern United Kingdom (UK) were collected during the period 2011-2023. The overall EAV seroprevalence in EAV-unvaccinated equids was 9.7 % (138/1425; 9...
Quam V.Inflammation plays a role in acute and chronic equine tendon/ligament injury; anti-inflammatories are often indicated. Local corticosteroids provide consistent and profound short-term effects on pain and inflammation across species. However, there is no demonstrated benefit in the long term, and complications can occur. Alternative biologic anti-inflammatory treatments are available and should be used in horses at risk of complications. Nonetheless, corticosteroids remain an affordable and effective anti-inflammatory that, with continued research, may be indicated on a case-by-case basis as pa...
Cito F, Di Francesco CE, Averaimo D, Chiaverini A, Alessiani A, Di Domenico M, Cresci M, Rulli M, Cantelmi MC, Di Bernardo MD, Giammarino A.... subsp. (SEZ) is a major problem in equine veterinary medicine. Typically, a commensal in horses, SEZ can cause severe disease including respiratory infections, septicaemia and reproductive tract infections under certain conditions. Recent evidence suggests that humans can also develop severe disease infection through direct contact with infected animals or the consumption of contaminated unpasteurised milk and milk products. This study investigates SEZ strains isolated from nasal swabs of equidae in central Italy in 2023 to describe the epidemiology and genomic characteristics of circulating...
Punyadarsaniya D, Taesuji M, Rattanamas K, Ruenphet S.Standard serological tests post-vaccination, such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), complement fixation, and virus neutralization, are crucial for monitoring African horse sickness (AHS). However, the availability of commercial test kits such as blocking ELISA varies by regions; while they are commonly used in Africa and Europe, their limited availability and high cost in Thailand present significant challenges. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate an alternative approach using an in-house indirect ELISA based on cell-based monovalent and polyvalent strains of live attenuated AH...
In the present study, the changes in the markers of stress and inflammatory responses of 12 Standardbred horses were investigated before and after exercise during late spring and summer. The environmental temperature, relative humidity, and temperature-humidity index (THI) were assessed during this study. From horses, blood sampling, measurement of heart and respiratory rate (HR and RR), and measurement of rectal temperature (RT) were performed before exercise (Pre) and within 5 min following the end of the exercise (Post). THI values showed mild stress in June and high stress in July. Direct ...
Sun YF, Han ZX, Yao XK, Meng J, Ren WL, Wang CK, Yuan XX, Zeng YQ, Wang YF, Sun ZW, Wang JW.: The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of different stages of training on the intestinal microbial abundance of Yili horses. : Ten Yili horses, all aged 2 years old and weighing 305 ± 20 kg, were selected and divided into a training group and an untrained group. The training group performed riding training 6 days a week, and the untrained group moved freely in the activity circle every day. Fecal samples were collected on days 30 and 60, and the intestinal microorganisms were detected and analyzed using metagenomics. : Compared with the 30-day untrained group, the relative abu...
Pádua GT, Tavares MA, de Lima NJ, Paula WVF, Dos Santos GC, Neves LC, Bittencourt RBM, Paludo RLDR, Cardoso ERN, da Silva BBF, Pádua BR....This study sought to investigate the presence of anti- spp. antibodies in georeferenced serum samples from equids across all regions of the state of Goiás, while also presenting variables that indicate risk factors for the circulation of rickettsiae, and evaluating the presence of rickettsial DNA in ticks collected from equids and the surrounding environment in the municipalities of Uruaçu and Porangatu, located in the northern region of the state. A total of 1156 equid serum samples provided by the Goiás Agricultural Defense Agency (Agrodefesa) were analyzed for antibodies against 4 antig...
Szacawa E, Kozieł N, Brzezińska S, Augustynowicz-Kopeć E, Weiner M, Szulowski K, Krajewska-Wędzina M. is one of the most dangerous pathogens of both animals and humans. Bovine tuberculosis (BTB) is a disease caused by mycobacteria belonging to the complex (MTBC), which spreads mainly among domestic cattle but also to mammals other than cattle. The transmission of MTBC between different species requires research and epidemiological investigations to control its spread. When multiple species are a reservoir of infection, it poses a significant public health and veterinary concern. In this study, the diagnosis of alpaca, cattle, horses, dogs, a sheep and a cat from one farm suspected of bovine ...
Bianchi D, Santos RRD, Peleja PL, de Sousa ABB, da Silva Evangelista M, de Almeida Júnior JS, Barata LES, Moraes WP, Minervino AHH. (tropical horse tick) is a tick species commonly found parasitizing horses and other equids in the Amazon region, causing economic losses. Currently, tick control is based on chemical acaricides, usually in a power formulation for topical use. However, its indiscriminate use results in the emergence of resistant tick lineages. Several plant compounds have been tested for their acaricide activity. In the Amazon, several plants are used for oil extraction, resulting in the production of solid residue (waste) that may contain chemical molecules with biological activities. Thus, we aimed to test ...
Domino M, Borowska M, Stefanik E, Domańska-Kruppa N, Skibniewski M, Turek B.In equine surface electromyography (sEMG), challenges related to the reliability and interpretability of data arise, among other factors, from methodological differences, including signal processing and analysis. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the filtering-induced changes in basic signal features in relation to the balance between signal loss and noise attenuation. Raw sEMG signals were collected from the quadriceps muscle of six horses during walk, trot, and canter and then filtered using eight filtering methods with varying cut-off frequencies (low-pass at 10 Hz, high-pass at 20 Hz...
Death studiesMay 28, 2025
1-11 doi: 10.1080/07481187.2025.2510477
Kaufman SVA, Nieforth LO.For practitioners involved in equine-assisted services (EAS), the death of a horse can be a significant life disruption. This study aims to understand the communicative resilience processes that equine-assisted service practitioners express following the death of an equine in their program. This study analyzed secondary qualitative data from a cross-sectional online survey completed by 84 participants. Analysis revealed practitioners engaged in all five communicative resilience processes following the death of an equine in their program. This research extends current resilience research by exa...
Bazzano M, Laus F, Cerquetella M, Spaterna A, Marchegiani A.Phytocannabinoids have the potential to lower intraocular pressure in both normal and glaucomatous eyes and they have been tested in different animal species, but not in the horse. The present paper describes the tonometric curve of healthy adult Italian Saddle horses after oral administration of cannabidiol oil (CBD). Methods: CBD 20% was administered orally (oily solution) at the dose of 1 mg/kg to 8 adult horses and intraocular pressure (IOP) was evaluated by tonometric curve. Data were then compared to those of the same horses obtained the day before (blank) CBD administration. Results: ...
Sobhy A, Nomir AG, Hamed MA, Abumandour MMA, El-Kammar M.The current study was prepared to compare the efficacy of xylazine-lidocaine HCl and detomidine-lidocaine HCl following caudal epidural injection in horses, evaluating sedation, analgesia, physiological parameters, and hemato-biochemical values. This study was applied to six healthy adult horses (300-350 kg, > 4 years of age). The horses were randomly divided into two equal groups. Group 1 (seven horses) received xylazine (0.17 mg/kg bwt) + lidocaine HCl (0.06 mg/kg bwt), while Group 2 received detomidine (0.03 mg/kg bwt) + lidocaine HCl (0.06 mg/kg bwt) via caudal epidural inje...
Bosman LM, Ambele MA, Pepper MS.Regenerative medicine is a relatively new branch of therapeutics in equine medicine, which aims to restore and reconstitute tissue function and structure via cellular and/or noncellular approaches. Biological constituents such as mesenchymal stromal/stem cells (MSCs) are potent therapeutics, which can aid in damaged tissue regeneration due to their differentiation capacity into many different cell types such as adipose tissue, bone, and cartilage. MSCs can be successfully and conveniently isolated from equine subcutaneous adipose tissue (adipose-derived stromal cells, ASCs). In horses, there a...
O'Connor A, Totton SC, Hernandez M, Meyers E, Meyers K, Abreu HM, Spofford N, Morrison J.Barriers to accessing veterinary care can be challenging for companion-animal caregivers and may lead to preventable health conditions or even death of pets. Objective: We conducted a scoping review to: 1) catalog the definitions of access to veterinary care (A2VC) used by researchers, 2) identify risk factors for and consequences of A2VC, and 3) map the risk factors onto dimensions of access to care (affordability, availability, accessibility, accommodation, acceptability). Methods: Primary research on companion animals not involved in commercial enterprises (e.g., horse racing) examining con...
Parra-Moyano LA, Cedeño A, Darby S, Johnson JP, Gomez DE.The effectiveness of the peritoneal fluid L-lactate-to-total solids ratio (PFL:PFTS) as a diagnostic marker for strangulating lesions of the small intestine (SI) and large colon (LC) has not been investigated. Objective: Describe and compare the PFL:PTFS and blood lactate (BL), peritoneal fluid lactate (PFL) and PFL:BL difference and PFL:BL ratio of horses with SI and LC strangulating (SO) and non-strangulating (NSO) obstructions and determine sensitivity and specificity to predict SO. Methods: A total of 282 horses, 117 with SI lesions (59 classified as SINSO and 58 as SISO), and 165 with LC ...
Araújo IRDS, de Brito EL, de Melo UP, Mariz ALB, Cavalheiro MT, Ferreira C, de Morais LF, de Souza RF.This study aimed to evaluate the use of antimicrobials in horses, focusing on administration practices, adherence to veterinary prescriptions, and the impact on the development of antimicrobial resistance. The research was based on a questionnaire completed by 220 horse owners in the State of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. The data collected covered aspects including antibiotic use, prescription sources, the performance of culture and susceptibility tests, and the disposal of veterinary drug waste. The results indicated that 98.63% of horse owners administered antibiotics mainly to treat respira...
Gómez-Torres F, Ballesteros-Acuña L, Ruíz-Sauri A.Arrhythmic sudden cardiac death in dogs and horses often results from ventricular arrhythmia secondary to myocardial damage. Despite this, limited data exist on the histomorphometric changes in cardiac conduction fibers (CCFs) and cardiac conduction cells (CCCs) following spontaneous myocardial infarction (MI). This study aimed to characterize morphometric and histological alterations in conduction fibers and their junctions with cardiomyocytes in infarcted hearts of horses and dogs. Unassigned: Ten hearts from horses and 10 from dogs that had died suddenly were examined. Histological and immu...
Horan K, Pfau T.Racehorses and jockeys can incur injuries, not only during gallops, but also during routine trotting exercise to access gallop tracks or warm-up. Understanding how jockey position affects racehorse movement may influence safety, and this may vary across different surface conditions. This study used inertial sensing technology (XSens MTw sensors) and linear mixed models to quantify and determine the significance (p ≤ 0.05) of jockey riding position ('rising' versus 'two-point seat') and surface type (artificial, grass and tarmac) on: 1) time offsets between stance and flight phases; 2) ho...
Medica A, Aitken RJ, Swegen A, Gibb Z.Context Equine reproductive technologies are crucial for overcoming challenges in natural fertilisation, particularly in sub-fertile stallions and breeding programs focused on genetic conservation and performance enhancement. Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), such as artificial insemination (AI), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), and in vitro fertilisation (IVF), improve fertility outcomes and enable breeding across geographical distances. Aims This review examines sperm isolation techniques used in ART, evaluating their efficacy, limitations, and potential to enhance reproduct...
Ribeiro RM, Oliveira TO, Ribeiro DSF.The use of thermal cameras in horses has proven effective for monitoring surface body temperature non-invasively, enabling the early identification of disease and inflammation. This study evaluated the agreement between a thermal camera compared to an infrared thermometer in the measurement of surface temperatures of 60 healthy horses (27 mares, 33 stallions; 7.88 ± 4.01 years; 466 ± 50.1 kg). Measurements were taken at the neck, thorax, and coronary band between 8:00-9:00 a.m., under controlled environmental conditions. Analysis revealed strong correlations between the two methods at the co...
Kadic LIM, Liu CC, Leise BS, McCauley CT, Riggs LM.The aim of the study was to determine if a novel arthrodesis technique for the equine metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joint using a human non-contact bridging (NCB), polyaxial locking compression plate system has biomechanical and potential clinical advantages versus a traditional 5.5 mm stainless steel locking compression plate (LCP) under biomechanical testing. Methods: An ex vivo biomechanical equine cadaver study. Methods: A total of 11 MCP joints collected from adult Thoroughbred horses euthanized unrelated to musculoskeletal disease. Methods: Each pair of MCP joints were randomly implanted w...
Donovan K, Torres J, Zhu D, Herrington WG, Staplin N.Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of disease progression are vulnerable to collider bias caused by selection of participants with disease at study entry. This bias introduces spurious associations between disease progression and genetic variants that are truly only associated with disease incidence. Methods of statistical adjustment to reduce this bias have been published, but rely on assumptions regarding the genetic correlation of disease incidence and disease progression which are likely to be violated in many human diseases. MR-Horse is a recently published Bayesian method to estimate...
Leus EK, Collins N, Gruyaert M, Kennedy RN, McConnell E, McGorum BC, Luethy D, Sanz M, Versporten A, Viljoen A, Lyle CH.Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is increasingly recognised in equine medicine. Antimicrobial use (AMU) is a key driver of AMR. Objective: To pilot a point prevalence survey (PPS), based on the Global-PPS used in human hospitals, to obtain data on antibiotic prescribing and AMR in equine hospitals and to identify targets for improvement in AMU. Methods: Point prevalence survey. Methods: Eight equine hospitals located in Australia, Belgium, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States were recruited. Data on AMU were collected from all in-patients on antibiotic treatment at 08h00 on fou...
Calle-González N, Rivero JL, Olivares J, Miró F, Argüelles D, Requena F, Munoz A.Capacitive-resistive electrical transfer (CRET) is an endogenous non-invasive technique, used as deep diathermy. We pursue to analyze the temperature changes by applying different CRET protocols in the thoracolumbar spine of horses, between thoracic vertebrae 15 and lumbar 2. Unassigned: Ten clinically sound horses without thoracolumbar pain underwent various CRET protocols applied to a standardized thoracolumbar region (T15-L2). The protocols included sham (device off), low intensity (LIP, 5%), medium intensity (MIP, 30%), and high intensity (HIP, 40%). The HIP protocol was further divided in...
Nielsen MK, Pyatt A, Perrett J, Tydén E, van Doorn D, Pihl TH, Schmidt JS, von Samson-Himmelstjerna G, Beasley A, Abbas G, Jabbar A.Equine parasite control has historically been characterized by confusing and conflicting information, posing significant challenges for veterinarians and horse owners to make evidence-based decisions. Since 2012, equine parasite control guidelines have been developed and published for different parts of the world to address this situation and provide trusted sources of current guidance. At the 2024 International Equine Infectious Disease Conference in Deauville, Normandy, France, lead authors of equine parasite control guideline documents published in the USA, UK, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherla...
