Mild-moderate equine asthma: A scoping review of evidence supporting the consensus definition.

The research article is a comprehensive review of existing studies related to mild-moderate equine asthma, assessing the consensus definition of the disease that uses various indicators of lung pathology, critique and evaluation of diagnostic indicators, and identifying areas of strengths and gaps in the literature.

About the Study

• The study was a scoping review, its main objective was to examine the current body of literature supporting the consensus definition of mild-moderate equine asthma, also known as mEA or inflammatory airway disease.
• It aimed to assess the strength of evidence supporting each diagnostic indicator used in the definition, identify any gaps or weaknesses in current research, and propose improvements for future studies.

Methodology

• Three databases were searched to find relevant articles about mEA or its diagnostic indicators. The search yielded 2275 articles.
• Of these, 298 full-text articles were assessed for eligibility, and ultimately 45 were reviewed in detail.
• The studies reviewed were conducted worldwide and involved a total of 6092 horses. They were predominantly observational and cross-sectional in nature.
• Most of the horses included in the reviewed studies were Thoroughbreds and racehorses.

Key Findings

• The researchers found that the evidence was more consistent for some pairwise relationships between diagnostic indicators, such as the relationship between cough and tracheobronchial mucus, than others, like bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) cytology and lung function.
• Almost half of the reviewed articles fell into a ‘high risk of bias’ category due to issues with study power and ‘masking’ (blinding).
• The studies were heterogeneous in terms of their clinical and laboratory measures, which made it impossible to combine their results in a meta-analysis.

Conclusions and Recommendations

• The study highlights the need for greater standardization in the diagnostic methods used for mEA and better reporting of methodology and results in future research.
• This would facilitate more rigorous systematic reviews and meta-analyses in the future and enhance the understanding and management of this common equine respiratory disease.