by MEREDITH-BAUER MITCHELL, UF/IFAS
Preventing or eliminating joint pain in your horses can make the difference between a wonderful quality of life for them or a painful life with limited activity. That’s why researchers at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Science (UF/IFAS) are studying equine joint pain to understand the root causes of this pain.
But they need your help: UF/IFAS Department of Animal Sciences researchers are recruiting horse owners to sign up their horses that have equine osteoarthritis or other types of joint pain for a non-invasive study.
This collaborative study across four UF colleges – UF/IFAS, the University of Florida’s Pain Research and Intervention Center of Excellence, Large Animal Surgery and the Department of Biomedical Engineering – aims to lead to solutions for equine joint pain, as well as ultimately lead to better treatments for joint pain for people, including arthritis. The study is funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
The research is meant to fit naturally into horses’ everyday routines and aims to recognize small signs of discomfort or pain in fetlocks before causing lameness, said UF/IFAS researcher Samantha Brooks.
“Horses live a long time, and we care about them deeply as owners, and anything we can do to understand their pain earlier is an investment in their future,” she said.
The study will include three yearly visits for two years, which will be done at your barn. The process includes free lameness exams, radiographs of the front fetlocks and blood draws. The researchers will observe the horses’ movements during normal activities to evaluate their gait over time.
In addition to better future care for horses, the study aims to develop early pain markers that are otherwise difficult to measure, thereby enabling early interventions and new therapeutic targets for the future for humans, as well, said Kaylee Young, a UF/IFAS research coordinator. About 53 million adults in the United States are living with arthritis, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This research could be life-changing for both horses and humans,” she said.
One of the benefits of studying horses is to understand joint pain in an objective, measurable way. Since horses cannot speak, researchers must create non-verbal, data-driven markers of discomfort and disease progression which can be used without leaning on the traditional “pain scale” used in human medicine, Brooks said. This should lead to earlier intervention and more targeted treatment for horses and humans alike.
“Horse owner participation is essential for the success of this study,” Young said.
To be eligible, a horse should be in or near North Central Florida, diagnosed with osteoarthritis, specifically in the fetlock, and the owner should be available for the duration of the research study, for visits.To participate, please email uf-gallop@ufl.edu with subject line “Study Participation” with your horse’s location and a brief summary of their health information, such as a diagnosis of fetlock osteoarthritis. You can also call 352-392-1918 to share the same information.