Great EHRF research moments
Dr. Bruce Wobeser, a veterinary pathologist who has investigated equine skin conditions. Photo: Debra Marshall.
In the past 30 years, the Equine Health Research Fund has supported a wide range of ground breaking studies at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine that have made a significant impact on equine health around the world.
The innovative Fund has also gained a reputation for backing pilot studies in new or often-ignored areas of horse health — and for encouraging young research scientists to look at equine health issues with fresh eyes.
Here’s a sampling of some of the “great research moments” in EHRF’s history:
• Hyperkalemic periodic paralysis (HYPP) identified: In 1992, Dr. Jonathan Naylor of WCVM and his research team were among the first to describe this genetic, muscular disease in Quarter horses and its familial link to one sire, Impressive.
The WCVM-based research discoveries appeared in a peer-reviewed article that was published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA).
• “Western Canadianized” equine nutrition research: During the 1980s, equine nutrition specialist Dr. Nadia Cymbaluk discovered the basic nutritional needs of western Canadian horses during winter and summer months, studied the effect of pregnant mares’ diets on foals’ health and prevention of diseases, compared horses’ digestion to cattle, measured the nutritional values of regional horse feeds and conducted standard equine digestibility studies.
Based on these studies, western Canadian horse owners now have a much greater understanding of equine nutrition and how to manage their horses’ diets.
• Equine locomotion research “takes off” at WCVM: Backed by the EHRF, Dr. Hilary Clayton’s interest in equine locomotion analysis flourished at WCVM. Those early studies helped to give the equine scientist a track record in sport horse conditioning, equine locomotion and equine biomechanics.
Clayton’s WCVM-based studies also helped her to attract more funding from larger organizations so she could be part of the chief research group for dressage and show jumping at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Today, Clayton is considered the world’s leading researcher in equine locomotion and biomechanics.
• True function of the equine guttural pouch revealed: A multi-disciplinary team of researchers from the University of Saskatchewan used WCVM’s high-speed treadmill to determine that guttural pouches — a pair of air-filled sacs in the inner tube that connect a horse’s ear and throat — are responsible for heat regulation in the animal’s brain.
Until 2000 when their discovery was published in the prestigious science journal Nature, guttural pouches were the largest anatomical structure of domestic animals whose function was still unknown.
• Putting equine influenza vaccines to the test: In the mid-1990s, a WCVM study showed that the leading injectable influenza vaccine on the market had no impact against a natural disease outbreak.
A few years later, the WCVM research team was involved in North America-wide clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of a modified live intranasal vaccine — a new product that did prevent the disease in challenged horses for at least six to 12 months.
These findings had a huge impact on the veterinary profession and vaccine companies. Since then, manufacturers have made significant improvements to the injectable, killed equine influenza vaccines, and more changes are coming as researchers and companies explore more advanced technology to stimulate the equine immune system.
• No need for corrective surgery: In 2002, WCVM researchers showed in an experimental study that periosteal stripping — a surgical treatment developed to treat foals’ crooked legs — wasn’t effective and was an unnecessary expense. Horse owners could achieve the same results and save money by simply stall-confining their crooked-leg foals and regularly trimming hooves. Since then, the number of foals that undergo surgery for crooked legs has significantly decreased across Western Canada.
• Ultrasonography, the ultimate equine reproduction tool: In the past decade, WCVM researchers have used quantitative visual analyis to identify reproductive patterns in ultrasound images.
Today, many western Canadian practitioners now use parameters developed by the research team to gain a better understanding of the changes leading to ovulation in mares, and how common hormonal treatments affect the changes in these tissues and the significance.
• Floating makes no difference: In 2001, a western Canadian research team worked with 56 equine ranching mares to investigate the relationship between feed digestibility and teeth floating. Contrary to conventional thought, the researchers found that floating makes no difference to feed digestibility — similar findings to two previous studies that were conducted in the U.S. and in Italy with smaller groups of horses.
