Is your horse’s coat getting more and more shaggy over the years? Is the coat becoming curly? Your horse might possibly have Pituitary Pars Intermedia Dysfunction – commonly abbreviated as PPID and also known as Equine Cushing’s Syndrome.
More than 20% of all horses over 15 years old develop PPID. In the early 1970s, the prevalence of PPID among about 4,000 horses treated by veterinarians was estimated to be between 0.075 percent and 0.15 percent. Some numbers today indicate that about 20% of all older horses, ponies, and donkeys develop the disease. PPID can affect horses and donkeys of all breeds and types, while ponies and Morgan horses are at higher risk. There seems to be an equal risk of PPID in mares, stallions, and geldings.
PPID develops over time and is usually diagnosed in older horses. PPID can be challenging to detect because the disease develops over many years. Therefore, it is usually older horses – between 18 and 23 years old – that are diagnosed with PPID. Although more and more horses have been diagnosed and treated for PPID in recent years, there is no evidence that there are actually more horses getting PPID. When more cases are detected, it is probably because veterinarians have become better at diagnosing PPID, and more horse owners are aware of the disease, noticing the long and curly coat, for example.
Symptoms of PPID
PPID is a syndrome disease, meaning it consists of a wide range of different symptoms that can vary from horse to horse. This makes it harder to detect the disease, as mentioned, since it develops over time. Here is a list of the most common symptoms of PPID:
Long and curly hair:
A common symptom of PPID is long and curly hair that doesn’t shed – initially, the hair may only grow on the lower jaw and other parts of the limbs. Over time, the horse can develop more and more hair, and the color of the coat can change.
Bad mood:
PPID is a disease of the pituitary gland, which is part of the brain. Therefore, the disease affects various substances and hormones. One of them is dopamine. Just like in humans, a lack of dopamine affects the mood in horses, so a symptom of PPID can be that your horse appears depressed.
Sweating problems:
Two-thirds of horses with PPID experience sweating problems – especially over the neck and shoulders.
Weight loss:
Weight loss is common in horses with PPID. In addition to actual weight loss, the horse loses muscle mass, especially in the hindquarters. Weight loss can be a difficult sign for you as a horse owner to notice. This is because weak and stretched abdominal muscles often mean that the belly continues to look round, effectively hiding the weight loss. Even if your horse is losing weight, you may still perceive its appetite as normal or even increased. There is often fat deposition along the crest of the neck, over the tail base, in the sheath of male horses, and above and behind the eyes.
Increased thirst:
Increased thirst and more urination are symptoms in between 33 and 75 percent of horses with PPID.
Bad teeth:
PPID can cause dental problems that can lead to painful chewing, resulting in reduced feed intake, which in turn causes the horse to lose weight.
Fatigue:
Fatigue and poor performance often affect horses with PPID, which may become excessively calm and even more pain-tolerant than healthy horses.
Wounds and infections:
Wounds in horses with PPID heal worse than in healthy horses, and the horse can be affected by various infections. This is often an overlooked symptom of PPID.
Chronic laminitis:
Chronic laminitis might be the most serious symptom of PPID. Some research suggests that chronic laminitis affects more than half of all horses with PPID. Chronic laminitis is a painful condition that sometimes leads to hoof abscesses and can become so severe that the horse has to be euthanized.
How the veterinarian diagnoses PPID
In practice, the veterinarian determines if your horse has PPID by examining its coat and checking for a range of other symptoms. The vet can also conduct various clinical tests. However, these are unfortunately not entirely reliable.
How PPID is treated
Treating horses with PPID requires, first and foremost, that you take good care of your horse’s grooming and health. Your veterinarian will also prescribe prescription medication to help your horse. In the early stages of PPID, where increased hair growth and sweating might be the primary symptoms, it might only be necessary to clip your horse’s coat. Since many affected horses are older, regular grooming and dental correction are important. You should also consider what feed your horse should have. It might need a special diet – preferably not sweet feed with a high soluble carbohydrate content – unless, of course, it is the only thing the horse will eat. Since it’s hard to see how much weight the horse is losing and how much muscle mass it’s losing, it might also be necessary to weigh or measure it regularly. One of the worst complications of PPID is, as mentioned, recurrent or chronic laminitis, so regular hoof care is essential to reduce the risk of it getting worse. You should also talk to your vet about medical treatment that can help your horse.
Prognosis for horses with PPID
Once your horse has PPID, it has the disease for life. However, PPID can be effectively managed with a combination of changes in care, grooming, and medication.
Sources:
Schott, H. C. (2002). Pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction: equine Cushing’s disease. Veterinary Clinics: Equine Practice, 18(2), 237-270.
Did you know that Danish research shows that your horse’s face reveals whether it is in pain?
That knowledge supplements already existing knowledge about how you assess whether your horse is in pain.
The Danish research team Karina Gleerup, Björn Forkman, Casper Lindegaard and Pia H. Andersen are behind the discovery. They studied six horses that showed very specific changes in their facial expressions when exposed to pain. The pain to which the horses were subjected was induced using the same method used in human pain research. Simply put, it’s a cuff, as you know it from blood pressure measurements, with chili paste underneath.
Pain is perceived differently
To videnskab.dk, one of the researchers behind the experiment, Karina Gleerup, said that as a veterinarian and horse lover, it was a big challenge to expose horses to pain, and that it therefore took place with many reservations:
“I first tested the sources of pain – which are frequently used in pain research on humans – on myself. Two types of pain were needed to see if the pain signs were the same. In addition, I had trained the horses a lot beforehand, so they were completely comfortable with the situation. Then I was also sure that it was pain and not, for example, stress, that I could read in their faces”, she says.
The experience of pain is very individual. What hurts you a lot may hurts me less. Or the other way around. What hurts a lot today hurts less tomorrow. It is the same with horses.
The experiment also showed that there was a difference in how clearly the horses’ faces revealed their pain. There was both a difference from one horse to another, and between the same horse from trial to trial.
How to look at your horse’s face to see if it is in pain
The ears:
If your horse is in pain, it has a greater distance between the ears, and they get an outward rotation – i.e. out to the sides. It may also be that the ears are asymmetrically positioned. If the horse puts its ears back, it can also be a sign that the horse is in pain.
Forehead and eyes:
A “frown forehead” or “worried expression” in people is often interpreted as a sign that everything is not quite as it should be. The same applies to horses.
We see it as a worried expression on the horse’s face, but it is probably in reality, a tension in the horse’s eyes, so that they get a slightly triangular appearance. At the same time, the gaze is not present but more inward.
The nostrils:
When a horse is in pain, its nostrils may become dilated and tense. When the horse breathes in, the nostrils expand into a square shape. Normally, the nostrils are round when the horse takes a breath.
It is an important sign of pain, because it can be seen, even if the horse otherwise seems to be breathing normally.
Mule:
When the horse is in pain, it tightens the muzzle so that it becomes more square in shape – normally it is soft and rounded.
Other discoveries in the study on pain in horses
The horses in the experiment wanted to be with the researcher, even if they were in pain. It is different from previous research. Here, the horses have been more hesitant to interact with humans when they were in pain.
The difference is perhaps that in this experiment, the horses were trained before the study, and the researcher was a person they knew and associated with something positive.
It is worth noting. Because perhaps horses that feel in a safe environment seek more contact when they experience mild or acute pain.
Research shows: This is why we must speak properly to horses
According to new research published in BMC Biology, studies show that horses, pigs and wild horses can not only distinguish between negative and positive sounds coming from their own species, but they can also recognize the difference when humans speak to them .
It emphasizes the importance of how we communicate with animals and how our tone can affect their perception of us.
The pigs and their wild relatives, the wild boars, were carefully studied, and the results showed that, like horses, both wild and tame, they clearly respond to emotionally charged sounds of their own kind. Interestingly, the animals also showed the ability to distinguish between human speech. Although the responses were more subtle, they could clearly distinguish between positively and negatively charged tones – except for the wild boars, which showed less variation in their responses.
Better well-being of the animals
The newly discovered knowledge not only raises ethical questions about our relationship with animals, but it can also represent a concrete opportunity to improve the animals’ daily well-being. Those who work with animals can benefit from this insight and use it as a practical tool to create better conditions and well-being for animals.
What does a horse feel? Do they even feel anything?
New research reveals emotional responses in horses through headband technology.
It has been known for a few years now that certain EEG waves can signal depression, anxiety and satisfaction in humans, but researchers have now moved on to also investigate it in animals. EEG studies of rodents and pets, meanwhile, have revealed how they respond to being touched by a human or being under anesthesia, but a way to record brain waves in moving animals has still not been found.
In short, this is because it requires placement in certain positions on the head, and the cables must be connected to a machine.
Therefore, this has most often meant that animals are either restrained or anesthetized during measurements.
Neurophysicist Hugo Cousillas has spent six years developing a device for horses that only has four electrodes, whereas those for humans have far more.
Once he had developed the new device, the experiment began by taking EEG recordings of 18 horses. Here, half of the horses lived in individual stalls in a classic, closed stable, while the other half roamed in herds in open fields.
It turned out that the two groups had very different EEG profiles. The horses in the stable showed an average of 2.5 times more “gamma” waves in the right hemisphere of the brain. In humans, it is often a sign of anxiety, distraction or depression. The horses that spent most of their time outdoors showed twice as many “theta” waves from the left hemisphere of the brain, which is generally a sign of a calm and alert mind.
You can read more about the research project here.
