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2 - Genetic Manipulation

For AAEP members this came in as #1 for important diseases or disease categories that required further research. Recently AAEP has created an initiative to do epidemiologic studies on 1) endocrine/metabolic
laminitis and 2) overload laminitis (secondary to catastrophic injury and post-surgical repair of severe fractures). Other studies in laminitis have been done using experimental models which has welfare issues.

It is recognized that in New Zealand there is a relative lack of large numbers of cases for study, due to low injury rate (support limb laminitis) but epidemiologic investigation of endocrine/metabolic laminitis as a
subgroup of the proposed AAEP study could be possible.

3 - Laminitis

For AAEP members this came in as #1 for important diseases or disease categories that required further research. Recently AAEP has created an initiative to do epidemiologic studies on 1) endocrine/metabolic
laminitis and 2) overload laminitis (secondary to catastrophic injury and post-surgical repair of severe fractures). Other studies in laminitis have been done using experimental models which has welfare issues.

It is recognized that in New Zealand there is a relative lack of large numbers of cases for study, due to low injury rate (support limb laminitis) but epidemiologic investigation of endocrine/metabolic laminitis as a
subgroup of the proposed AAEP study could be possible.

4 - Joint Disease

Early diagnosis of joint injury (including subchondral bone injury that leads to fracture). There is many commonalities here between Massey University work and Colorado State University (CSU), with a number of publications already made on imaging techniques such as CT to predict early injury. A recent study at CSU showed serum biomarkers useful with at 79.5% predictability of injury. The long term vision is to use biomarkers to identify a horse at risk and get them into the imaging procedures. The Marilyn Simpson Trust has given $500,000, much of which has been involved in supporting the GERA study in New Zealand, as well as current biomarker analysis of the horses. Further research with biomarkers is critical to identify both early joint disease (allowing early intervention) as well as early stages of stress fracture (to predict severe injury non-invasively).

5 - Equine genome and the implications to Thoroughbred racing

For AAEP members this came in as #1 for important diseases or disease categories that required further research. Recently AAEP has created an initiative to do epidemiologic studies on 1) endocrine/metabolic
laminitis and 2) overload laminitis (secondary to catastrophic injury and post-surgical repair of severe fractures). Other studies in laminitis have been done using experimental models which has welfare issues.

It is recognized that in New Zealand there is a relative lack of large numbers of cases for study, due to low injury rate (support limb laminitis) but epidemiologic investigation of endocrine/metabolic laminitis as a
subgroup of the proposed AAEP study could be possible.