Liphook Equine Hospital

We are all now recognising that most cases of liver disease that we encounter are part of a wider outbreak amongst herd-mates, even if the others appear externally healthy. This suggests a common toxin or infectious aetiology. It is useful to rule out “old favourites” such as ragwort by biopsy. Fluke is rare and almost impossible to rule out as no antemortem tests are reliable.

Work performed at Liphook over the last few years has identified fumonisin B1 contamination of forage as a possible cause of some outbreaks and international work looking at various causes of viral hepatitis in horses has identified a number of candidates including equine Hepacivirus, equine Pegivirus, Theiler’s disease associated virus and equine Parvovirus.

See Cornell University Laboratory website:

https://ahdc.vet.cornell.edu/news/equinehepatitis.cfm

and recent publication describing equine Parvovirus: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5782890/pdf/17-1031.pdf

Continued work at Liphook has identified equine Parvovirus in some horses with liver disease and we hope to offer this, and other, new PCR assays shortly.

Here’s our latest podcast – something to download to your phones and listen to as you drive round in the snowy weather this week!

https://victoriasouth.podbean.com/e/acute-tendinopathy-in-the-horse-with-victoria-south-in-discussion-with-russell-parker/

Liphook Equine Hospital are pleased to announce the date of our first Equine Veterinary CPD of 2018.

The event will take place on Wednesday 21st March at The Petersfield School, Petersfield, and is very kindly sponsored by Dechra.

To book your FREE place, please contact our hospital reception team on: 01428 727200, or via email to tasha.wilson@theleh.co.uk

We thought you might like to take a look at our new purpose built Laboratory building – our team moved in over Christmas.  We have plenty of space, and the team love their wonderful views of the Hospital’s paddocks, menage, and the beautiful Common in the distance.  Here’s a video to show a bird’s eye view of the new Laboratory building.

We are so pleased to report that we have now reached more than 600 podcast downloads!  Vets tell us they love downloading them to listen to whilst driving between calls on the road.  Our latest Podcast discussion on Strangles was published just before Christmas – take a look at this link to Podbean where you can download the podcasts and subscribe if you like what you hear:

Liphook Equine Hospital Strangles Podcast

Here’s a link to a recent publication that is discussed in the Strangles podcast:

Comparison of nasopharangeal and guttural pouch specimens shows guttural pouch washes to be 51 times more likely to be positive for Strep equi subs equi than nasopharangeal swabs and washes in convalescent horses: Boyle et al (2017) 10.1186/s12917-017-0989-4

Please see the Liphook Equine Hospital Podcast page to download our latest podcast on equine Cushing’s disease with Victoria South in discussion with Professor Andy Durham.  They discuss the clinical manifestation of equine Cushing’s disease, review the diagnostic options year-round and finally they work through some treatment and monitoring scenarios.

The Equine Endocrinology Group has launched its latest recommendations on equine Cushing’s disease/PPID.  This is a great summary of diagnostic and treatment protocols:

EEG PPID Consensus statement Nov 2017

We are delighted to receive recognition from the British Horseracing Authority for our ringworm PCR test.  We are the first and only Laboratory worldwide to offer a highly sensitive and specific qPCR to detected all dermatophyte species known to affect horses including Trichophyton spp, Microsporum spp and Arthroderma spp.  This assay can be run on every weekday and has a same day turnaround so that vets can get a rapid result back to their clients and racing yards to confirm their suspicions of disease, or to prove that a treated horse is no longer a contagious risk to others.

The British Horseracing Authority now recognise this ringworm qPCR as a suitable test for proof of non-contagiousness in a racehorse prior to attendance at a racecourse.  Please see this link to the BHA’s certificate of non-contagiousness that racehorse vets use to confirm that a horse is free from ringworm infection: BHA-VO29-Ringworm-Certificate-of-Non-Contagiousness.

We are delighted to launch our latest podcast on Liver Disease.  Here are a few of the papers we discuss in the podcast:

Quigley et al (2017) Prevalence of liver fluke infection in Irish horses and assessment of a serological test for diagnosis of equine fasciolosis:  doi: 10.1111/evj.12577