Laminitis: recent advances and future directions.

The research article is discussing the recent discoveries and possibilities for future research on laminitis, a common equine disease. The study identifies the multiple pathways that lead to the disease and the implications of these on preventative and therapeutic strategies.

Understanding of Laminitis

• Laminitis is a horse disease that affects horses across the globe and impacts their welfare significantly.
• The disease leads to laminar failure, with most of the previous studies striving to find a single unifying theory explaining its occurrence.
• The current belief is that there are multiple pathways leading to this disease’s onset. The major implication of this notion is that sepsis, endocrine disease and excessive weight bearing in horses all culminate in the same consequence – laminitis.

Effects on Preventative and Therapeutic Strategies

• This understanding shifts the approach to preventive and therapeutic strategies against the disease.
• It is now implied that these strategies need to be more sophisticated and specifically targeted towards the type of laminitis at hand.
• This article mentions that these are discussed in more detail in its special focus section.

Past and Recent research on Laminitis

• Equine Veterinary Journal (EVJ) is known for promoting research on laminitis and has published a variety of articles on the subject.
• Studies have looked at the morphological features of the primary epidermal laminae, shown the changes to the lamellar basement membrane in the developmental phase of the disease and even challenged the notion that metalloproteases play a central role in its onset.
• Other studies have aimed to understand the specific roles inflammatory mediators play in sepsis-associated laminitis and looked at the role of insulin in regulating glucose transport within the hoof.
• Future research will need to further clarify the underlying mechanisms and provide better clinical tests in endocrinological laminitis.

Prevention and Treatment of Laminitis

• Research has provided evidence supporting cryotherapy as an effective preventive measure instead of it being considered as diverting inciting mediators away from the foot due to hypoperfusion.
• Disappointingly, lidocaine, commonly used in equine hospitals, has failed to inhibit inflammatory events in the laminae or skin in related studies.
• One standout discovery has been that of lost epidermal stem cells in chronic laminitis, which presents a potentially new approach to therapy.

Access to Laminitis Information

• The proliferation of the internet has made finding information easier for the general public, including horse owners.
• However, there is a challenge in that much of the available information lacks quality and rigour. For instance, many scientific journals, including EVJ that this study is published in, are generally not accessible to nonsubscribers.
• To counter this closed access, some have called for open-access publishing, making all scientific papers freely available.
• In the meantime, EVJ is offering individual researchers an avenue to make their work freely available using an Online Open facility. They are also providing free access to welfare-important information and those of interest to the equine community.