{"id":311,"date":"2011-10-12T16:37:31","date_gmt":"2011-10-12T20:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carlyhodes.com\/?p=311"},"modified":"2011-10-12T16:37:31","modified_gmt":"2011-10-12T20:37:31","slug":"reining-in-roaring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carlyhodes.com\/?p=311","title":{"rendered":"Reining in Roaring"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nEarlier detection and new treatments for horse racing\u2019s number-one performance problem<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/strong><\/span>It\u2019s a big day at the track. Years of training and thousands of dollars are at
\nstake. The gates open and your horse lunges forward. But his breath comes
\nin gasps. It looks as if he\u2019s wearing a heavy mask that is blocking his access to
\nair. Worn nerves signal sluggishly to weakened muscles that barely respond
\nenough to open his airway. He slows and falls to the back of the pack.<\/p>\n

This career-limiting problem affects nearly 8 percent of race horses and a higher percentage of sport horses. Oficially called “recurrent laryngeal neuropathy,” the common equine disease is better known as \u201croaring\u201d for the strained sounds affected horses make when they try to run. It shares similarities with human vocal cord paralysis, a neurological condition
\ncausing difi culty breathing and loss of speech and requiring tracheostomy and intensive surgery. Roaring starts early and
\nunseen, slowly wearing down the nerves that stimulate the muscle responsible for opening the larynx.<\/p>\n

\u201cUpper airway problems cause poor performance in many race horses,\u201d said Dr. Jonathan Cheetham, an equine surgeon and sports medicine practitioner at Cornell\u2019s Equine Hospital. \u201cSymptoms often show in a horse\u2019s second to fourth year, when a trainer has already invested thousands in its athletic career. The standard treatment, surgery called a laryngeal tie-back together with a \u2018lazer hobday\u2019 procedure to remove the vocal cords, returns 65-70 percent of treated horses to racing. But that\u2019s after six weeks of recovery and another six weeks to regain fitness. It takes a toll on the horses, their trainers, and the racing economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taking roaring by the reigns, Dr. Cheetham and the Equine Performance Clinic team are helping to change how veterinarians look at and treat the disease. The team running the Clinic\u2019s indoor treadmill offers good client service while researching new methods to diagnose disease earlier and improve treatments.<\/p>\n

According to Cheetham, the horse is a useful preclinical model of human airway disease. Much of what he is learning and working out at Cornell could help restore function in human patients with laryngeal disease. The Equine Performance Clinic pioneered techniques using a trans-esophageal ultrasound to evaluate airway muscles in horses.\u00a0 Developed at Cornell with support from the Harry M. Zweig Memorial Fund, these techniques could give human doctors a new view of deteriorating laryngeal muscles and let them follow progress after treatment.<\/p>\n

The team is developing a novel treatment for roaring using a laryngeal pacemaker to electronically stimulate the muscle and maintain its function: another technology applicable to humans with vocal paralysis.<\/p>\n

Cheetham has spent the past year developing new ways of detecting neurological disease earlier, thanks to a grant from the Grayson Jockey-Club Foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cMotor nerves need insulation from myelin sheathes to carry signals quickly,\u201d said Dr. Cheetham. \u201cLaryngeal neuropathy works by breaking down myelin in the two major meter-long nerves controlling the horse\u2019s airway muscles, slowing their conduction velocity and cutting off the muscles from adequate stimulation. If we can use nerve conduction velocity to detect early myelin breakdown we may be able to catch the disease before the muscle starts shrinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Placing tiny needles into the nerves, Dr. Cheetham measured conduction speeds across their length to see how speeds vary across the nerves. Next he will validate a technique that does not use needles and look at how nerve conduction velocity at the weanling stage affects performance of 2-year-old horses with the hope of confirming it as a viable diagnostic and predictive tool. Validating such a test would expand the window of detection and open doors to earlier prevention and treatments, and aid understanding of the disease mechanisms that produce \u2018roaring\u2019 in horses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have also been developing ways of enhancing nerve grafting using tissue engineering techniques,\u201d said Dr. Cheetham. \u201cIf we can pick up problems early, we might be able to treat without invasive surgery or a permanent implant. It could be safer, cheaper, and faster, and may improve the success of recovery from airway diseases in both horses and humans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Discuss this work with Dr. Cheetham on Facebook
\nhttps:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CornellEquine<\/a>
\nVisit the Equine Performance Center website
\nhttp:\/\/www.vet.cornell.edu\/labs\/eptc\/intro.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

‘Scopes Magazine
\nOctober 2011<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier detection and new treatments for horse racing\u2019s number-one performance problem It\u2019s a big day at the track. Years of training and thousands of dollars are at stake. The gates open and your horse lunges forward. But his breath comes in gasps. It looks as if he\u2019s wearing a heavy mask that is blocking his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,2,35,10,13,20,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scopes-magazine","category-animals","category-faculty","category-horses","category-medicine","category-research","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carlyhodes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carlyhodes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carlyhodes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carlyhodes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carlyhodes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/carlyhodes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carlyhodes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carlyhodes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carlyhodes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}