How Strangles Disease affects Horses.

futurekr(70)

Published in

StemSocial

Words

1170

Reading

6 min

Listen

Play

Friends welcome to my page, you know that over here I am passionate about pets and animals in general, week in and week out, I take you, my lovely readers, through some of the various infections/diseases that could plague our household pets and what can be done to protect our lovely animals, but like some other rare occasions. Today, we are moving the topic a little bit away from pets and we are moving it to a particular animal, that not a lot of people would consider as a pet.

Thinking about it now, I feel some people may keep this animal as a pet, but to do this, it certainly means you are wealthy, because considering the required maintenance/sustenance of the animal, it's pretty expensive. Anyways, in today's topic, I will be writing about a disease that affects horses.
When I first read about this disease, I mentioned to my friend that, it is not economically cautious (because a horse is expensive, my goodness), but if diseases and infections can attack even humans, then nothing else is safe.

Image Source

Strangles is a bacterium disease, a highly contagious one at that, it affects the equine upper respiratory tract, and it is caused by the bacterium Streptococcus equi subspecies equi (S.equi). The bacteria move through the mucous membranes found in the mouth and the nose, and it moves to infect the lymph nodes where they can actually cause abscesses and eventually get ruptured. The lymph nodes infected become swollen, and it could get the upper respiratory tract compressed, and that is why it is described with the term STRANGLES.

This disease is not a territory-based one, it occurs worldwide affecting mostly horses that fall within the range of 6-10 years of age. Once horses inhale or ingest the bacteria, they get infected, the process of ingestion or inhalation can happen through contact between one horse to another, the consumption of contaminated water, or maybe the horse comes in contact with a material or equipment that has previously been infected.

How severe the disease gets is greatly dependent on the immune system of the animal involved, as well as the dose and the strain of the bacteria. One major contributing factor to the disease is during movements amongst competitions, or breeding farms, farmers complain about the difficulty to control and prevent high-quality contagious diseases.

Image Source

Pyrexia is usually the first clinical sign of S.equi infection, and it takes about 1-18 after bacteria exposure before the signs begin to show, the number of days it takes, depends strongly on immune status and infectious dose. The ruptured abscesses as explained in paragraph three, would result in a release of thick purulent discharge that gets drained through the skin or into the guttural pouch and out of the nostrils through the nasopharynx. The release of this purulent material could as well be accompanied by a soft, moist cough.

Instantly identifying and isolating the horse that develops a rectal temperature of about 38.5 degrees Celsius, and above could minimize the transmission of S.equi to in-contact animals, this will prevent one clinical case from resulting in an outbreak that will affect other horses present.

When there is an incomplete drainage of abscess material from the guttural pouch or sinuses, it would lead to persistent infection development, after their recovery from a case of acute clinical disease. When a horse is a carrier, it would still have a healthy appearance, but can still shed S.equi from the guttural pouch into the environment, where it would be able to trigger a new case of disease.

S.equi can survive for up to seven days on surfaces that do not have direct exposure to sunlight, they can also last for as long as 30 days in drinking water. It is highly sensitive to detergent, and severe bio-security and cleaning protocols will limit transmission risk to other horses.

Not every case of strangle occurrence results in complications, but when it does happen, abscesses will develop within other body organs, this is known as BASTARD STRANGLES, and it is usually very fatal. Another life-threatening, but complicated case of strangles is the 'Purpura haemorrhagica', this case causes bleeding coming from the capillaries and fluid accumulation in and around the limbs and the head. The fluid accumulation can become so strong that it leads to circulatory collapse and eventual death.

Diagnosing the presence of strangles in a horse is dependent on the clinical scenario;

Serology is also a means of screening and identifying horses that are exposed to S.equi, this is after an outbreak or before transport in the absence of overt clinical signs.
If there is a case of external abscess or severe nasal discharge, then it would be ideal to have a needle aspirate/swab of pus or a nasopharyngeal swab/wash for qPCR.
If there is a sign of pyrexia, cough, or nasal discharge, then a pharyngeal swab or wash for qPCR is an optimal treatment, there however needs to be an acceptance that shedding of S.equi is going to be intermittent during the early stage of the disease.
A guttural pouch lavage sample that is tested by qPCR, can also be used in the identification of persistently infected carriers and also used for the confirmation of infection-free status after treatment.

The major treatment for Strangles is usually supportive care, medications are administered to handle increased temperature, and also to make the horse able to feed appropriately. When a horse is fed wet, sloppy food from the floor, it also makes it easier for the infected horse to swallow and gives room for abscesses to drain.

Occasionally, antibiotics are used for treatment, but it remains a controversial use of treatment, as it is believed that the majority of the cases do not require antibiotic treatment. Sometimes, there could be considerations of antibiotics when there is a case of purpura haemorrhagica, when an animal has profound lymphadenopathy and respiratory distress that requires urgent intervention, as well as a case of disseminated infection. The good thing is we now have the vaccination, that is indicated towards the reduction of the existence of strangles in the first place.

Just because I was still doubting if anyone could just keep a horse as a pet, I decided to do some further reading, and to my surprise people do keep a horse as pets and they explain some of the associated benefits with it, but some regulations must be kept, council regulations that need to be adhered with, before you can proceed with it.

I am right in saying only very wealthy people will be able to keep a horse as a pet as there are medical emergencies that could unfortunately occur and require several thousand dollars to treat. Remember there is also a strong need for shelter and consistent maintenance. Where I come from, you will mainly find horses in a king's palace, as it is a great symbol of royalty, every other person that owns it has to be ''very and really'' wealthy.