Joint Injury and Arthritis in Horses: Searching for Solutions

At the Colorado State University’s Orthopaedic Research Center, researchers have developed and advanced numerous diagnostic, preventive, and treatment options for musculoskeletal problems for both horses and humans. (The horse is an excellent model for osteoarthritis and cartilage repair in people, as tissue changes that occur in the horse mimic what happens in humans.)
Share
Favorite
Close

No account yet? Register

ADVERTISEMENT

An abundance of equine orthopedic research is under way at Colorado State.

"I wanted to answer questions that hadn't been answered." So says Wayne McIlwraith, BVSc, PhD, FRCVS, DSc, Dr. med vet (hc), Dipl. ACVS, about his arrival some 30 years ago as an assistant professor and equine surgeon at Colorado State University's (CSU) Department of Clinical Sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Those questions concerned how to better diagnose and treat musculoskeletal problems, particularly joint (articular) injuries and osteoarthritis: "Sixty percent of horses retire because of osteoarthritis–loss of articular cartilage and degradation of articular cartilage. It's a huge, frustrating disease."

The quest for those answers soon led the young New Zealander to form the Orthopaedic Research Center (ORC) at CSU in the mid-1980s. "I came to CSU in 1979 having just finished my PhD at Purdue and started doing relatively small research projects with surgical residents," recalls McIlwraith. "I had supervised three PhD students when Dr. Rick Howard started a PhD with me in 1993 and, working in Dr. Jenny Nyborg's lab (a very good molecular biology researcher), Rick cloned the gene sequences for interleukin-1 and interleukin- 1 receptor antagonist that set us on an upgraded pathway. Drs. Chris Kawcak and Dave Frisbie, during their residencies, set up a small laboratory in the Vet Teaching Hospital, where we started doing more sophisticated analyses, and this was when the ORC started to take off. I wanted to get to the next level of research, and this was aided by a foundation providing me with four years' salary for Drs. Kawcak and Frisbie to stay with us as assistant professors within the research program.

"We had a number of missions," says McIlwraith. "To get better methods to repair articular cartilage defects, to develop better methods of early diagnoses prior to earlier treatment and to treat these problems more effectively, and to see if we could predict catastrophic fracture. We'd gone through a phase where arthroscopy enabled us to treat a lot of things successfully, but not everything successfully; there were limitations, and if there was too much osteoarthritis or cartilage loss, the horse wasn't going to come back

Create a free account with TheHorse.com to view this content.

TheHorse.com is home to thousands of free articles about horse health care. In order to access some of our exclusive free content, you must be signed into TheHorse.com.

Start your free account today!

Already have an account?
and continue reading.

Share

Written by:

Marcia King is an award-winning freelance writer based in Ohio who specializes in equine, canine, and feline veterinary topics. She’s schooled in hunt seat, dressage, and Western pleasure.

Related Articles

Stay on top of the most recent Horse Health news with

FREE weekly newsletters from TheHorse.com

Sponsored Content

Weekly Poll

sponsored by:

Where do you primarily feed your horse?
282 votes · 282 answers

Readers’ Most Popular

Sign In

Don’t have an account? Register for a FREE account here.

Need to update your account?

You need to be logged in to fill out this form

Create a free account with TheHorse.com!