Laminitis In Equine Animals

The equine species is an animal that has a long history of evolution and formation. The surrounding environment causes the horse to adjust and adapt its body simultaneously in order to survive in this ever-changing world. However, with any species there will always be downfalls and weaknesses in an animals anatomy and physiology when presented with changes in the standard conditions the body was initially designed for. These changes can lead to various illnesses and diseases that can hinder an animals performance or potentially lead to death. One of the diseases a horse can come across in its lifetime is laminitis. “Laminitis is one of the most common and frustrating clinical presentations in equine practice” (Morgan). This disease is brought

The first known equine veterinary writings date to “2500 BC in China, 1900 BC in Egypt, and 1800 BC in India” (Wagner). However, specific mentions of laminitis date back to as early as 1350 BC (Wagner). One of the first civilizations to encounter the disease and try and treat it were the people the the Roman Empire dating back to 50 AD (Wagner). Wagner stated that during this era, people were treating laminitis by bleeding. This treatment option was the first recorded in history (Wagner). If the people noticed that the horse’s hoof was hot to the touch, or the horse was showing signs of lameness, then the middle of its leg would be cut and left to bleed (Wagner). It was not until the early fourth century when Apsyrtus, the father of veterinary medicine, added on to the treatment options and recommended that “dietary restrictions and exercise in addition to bleeding” would help a horse showing signs of laminitis. The idea of the hoof wall separating from the laminae did not become evident until Chiron came up with the idea in the fourth

“Laminitis is the most serious disease of the equine hoof that can cause pathological changes in anatomy that lead to loss of function or potentially death”(Pollitt). It is believed that more than half of the cases of laminitis are induced by an excesses of carbohydrates in the animal’s diet (Millinovich). Large structural carbohydrates in the form of sugar, fructans, or starch are indigestible to mammals without the help of microbial hindgut fermentation (Pollitt, Visser). When a horse ingests too many grains, the primary microorganism that is responsible for “the rapid fermentation of carbohydrate to lactic acid in the equine hindgut is called S. bovis” (Pollitt). “Most of the consequences of carbohydrate overload occur after the arrival of the carbohydrate in the hindgut and relate to the rapid proliferation of hindgut bacteria flourishing in the presence of excess substrate” (Pollitt, Visser). This means that a horse’s digestive tract is not made for rich foods loaded with carbohydrates because the small intestine cannot fully digest or absorb the large structures and as a result it produces fermentable substrate for microbial toxins in the hindgut that are later absorbed elsewhere in the animal’s body