Rotavirus Vaccine

Researchers looked at healthy and sick foals and also checked mares at foaling and two days after foaling to see if the mares were shedding the rotavirus into the environment where the foals could pick it up.
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While it seems that the wheels of progress spin slowly, progress does get made. Sometimes without fanfare or accolades. Generally with the hard, dedicated work of a few people. Oftentimes because of a simple question.

In this case, 10 years ago a question was asked: What is causing foal diarrhea outbreaks in Kentucky? Many farms would have 70% or higher incidence of sick foals at a time when they were in the middle of the breeding and foaling season. A Thoroughbred farm manager once said the smells of spring in Kentucky included fresh-mown grass, sweet clean air, and Pepto-Bismol (given to foals with diarrhea). Lloyds of London brokers and Kentucky agents funded a three-year study to look into the outbreaks, as proposed by David Powell, FRCVS, an epidemiologist at the Gluck Equine Research Center at the University of Kentucky.

Several Thoroughbred farms in the Central Kentucky area allowed researchers from the Gluck Center to obtain blood and fecal samples throughout the foaling seasons of 1986, 1987, and 1988, explained Roberta Dwyer, DVM, MS, Diplomate American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine, who also worked with the study. The first year, researchers found that the most common cause of diarrheal outbreaks was rotavirus.

The second year of the research, more farms were added and the criteria was expanded. Researchers looked at healthy and sick foals and also checked mares at foaling and two days after foaling to see if the mares were shedding the rotavirus into the environment where the foals could pick it up (see sidebar on rotavirus). Although none of the mares tested was found to be shedding rotavirus, it is known to happen in other species, so it was thought that the mares might have been shedding sporadically or the test might not have been sensitive enough

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Written by:

Kimberly S. Brown is the editor of EquiManagement/EquiManagement.com and the group publisher of the Equine Health Network at Equine Network LLC.

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