The carbohydrate digestion-absorption test in the horse. Technic and normal values.

The article presents a study on a newly devised test to examine digestive and pancreatic functions in horses. It focuses on carbohydrate digestion and absorption, offering a technique and establishing the normal values for healthy horses.

Introduction

• The article starts by recognizing the higher instance of gastrointestinal diseases among horses, and the subsequent challenge in diagnosing and evaluating such diseases due to the limited accessibility to the anterior part of the gastrointestinal tract – notably the stomach, duodenum, and related glands and organs like the liver and pancreas.
• While there are existing procedures to evaluate liver function and injury in horses, the authors noted a void in examinations that could assess the horse’s gastrointestinal or pancreatic functions.
• The research’s aim is to create a method for examining the functionality of the gastrointestinal tract and/or the pancreas.
• The need for a new test originated from the inability of previous lipid absorption tests used in dogs to be valid in horses, as administrating lipid to healthy horses yielded no observable lipemia (excess lipid levels in the blood).

Materials and Methods

• The technique for the carbohydrate digestion-absorption test is detailed: horses undergoing examinations are fasted overnight.
• A blood sample is drawn without anticoagulant in the morning, after which two pounds of corn starch suspended in approximately four liters of water is fed to the horse via a stomach tube.
• Subsequent blood samples are taken one, two, three, and four hours after the administration of the starch. In some cases, samples are drawn at 15- or 30-minute intervals during the first hour.
• The test concludes with determining the serum glucose values in the blood samples. These are obtained by circling the blood, transferring the serum to another clean glass tube, and examining it using a modified version of the orthotoluidine method.

Controls

• The article also emphasizes that each animal evaluated by this carbohydrate digestion-absorption test was used as its own control.
• This is due to the fact that the method is individualized and the results are therefore compared to the same horse’s health criteria, rather than a generalized ‘healthy horse’ model. This ensures the results are highly relevant and personalized.