Equine asthma treatment study underwayApril 22, 2019Having already invented a means of diagnosing equine asthma, a professor at Purdue's College of Veterinary Medicine is focusing his attention on treating horses with the condition. Laurent Couëtil, DVM, PhD, professor of large animal internal medicine, director of Purdue University's Equine Sports Medicine Center, has spent majority of his career treating and researching equine asthma. "Milder equine asthma has been difficult to detect because horses don't necessarily show many signs besides the fact they're not performing well," says Dr. Couëtil. "Some of them cough once in a while, but it isn't crippling them. Now that we have the tools to look for it, we realize it's very common." "In humans, the most common test performed to test for asthma is forced exhalation. The nurse trains you to take in the deepest breath possible and blow out as hard as you can. This is easy for people because we can follow instructions, but you can't tell a horse to do that, so I worked with Purdue engineers to develop a pulmonary function test for horses." Corticosteroids are typically used to treat equine asthma; however, they come with a risk of drug violations in racehorses, suppress the horse's immune system, and …
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