EVIDENCE SUGGESTS EQUINE

Reference: “Behavioral laterality and facial hair whorls in horses,” Journal of Equine Veterinary Science, September 2016

Duke University researchers recently sought to answer a long-standing question about the equine influenza virus (EIV): Can it infect people? Their answer is “yes.”

Working with graduate students from China and Mongolia, Gregory Gray, MD, MPH, FIDSA, of Duke’s Division of Infectious Diseases, headed a team that reviewed 2,206 scientific journal articles related to equine influenza outbreaks that mentioned both humans and horses.

The earliest study of significance that the team found was published in the Ukraine in 1959. Based on bloodwork done on affected horses, the Ukrainian researchers determined that an influenza outbreak among race horses may have been associated with a human flu outbreak that occurred at the same time.

Studies conducted in the mid-1960s at the National Institutes of Health showed that 12 to 20 percent of people who were experimentally inoculated with a H3N8 equine influenza virus developed clinical symptoms, such as a fever or cough.

“Now, that’s a low percentage,” says Gray, “and these were people in a hospital setting with high number of viruses sprayed up their noses, so we aren’t clear how frequently people have symptoms from equine influenza virus infection in a more natural setting, but these studies---and others like it---show that humans can be infected with at least one type of equine influenza virus.”

More recent studies provided evidence of previous equine influenza virus infection in people exposed to horses, but questions remain. “In an active study in Mongolia we continue to look for convincing proof that humans play a role in