REASSURING FINDINGS ABOUT PREDNISOLONE

In equine medicine, glucocorticoids are a doubleedged sword: These powerful anti-inflammatory drugs can provide vital relief for horses with severe respiratory ailments, allergies and traumatic injuries, but they carry a potentially deadly downside ---an increased risk of laminitis , an often crippling condition affecting the hooves.

Now, however, a study from England shows that at least one glucocorticoid---the commonly used drug prednisolone---does not appear to make horses more susceptible to laminitis.

Working at Liphook Equine Hospital in Hampshire, veterinarians reviewed the records of horses admitted to the hospital from January 2001 to November 2014. They identified horses who had been given oral prednisolone as part of treatment and matched each with two “control” horses that had been treated at the clinic at the same time but not given the drug.

The data collected from each horse’s files included age, breed, reason for treatment, dose and duration of prednisolone administration and previous history of laminitis. In addition, the researchers documented whether the horses had been diagnosed with pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction (PPID, also known as Cushing’s syndrome) or showed any signs of equine metabolic syndrome (EMS).

Concerns about glucocorticoids and laminitis are not completely unfounded, says Victoria Jordan, MA, VetMB, MRCVS: “There is published evidence that triamcinolone, a more potent steroid, can induce laminitis at repeated or higher than normal doses.”

However, the collected study data told a different story about prednisolone: The administration of the drug at the doses and frequency used in the studied horses did not increase their risk of laminitis. What’s more, among horses with metabolic or endocrine disease ---a population already more