Joint maintenance and joint care are key to keeping training and every-day work on schedule for most horses. Repetitive stress from work, competition and conditioning, in addition to wear and tear, impacts even the strongest most athletic horses.
Veterinarian checks horse's joints
Both blood and synovial fluid had good sensitivity and specificity, meaning that they were sufficiently able to diagnose horses with septic joint infections when present and rule out joint infections when they were not.
The equine joint is engineered to provide virtually frictionless motion through the combination of a smooth articular cartilage surface as well as lubrication of the cartilage and the synovial membrane.
The synovial membrane of the joint produces a lubricating substance or “joint oil” called synovial fluid. The high levels of hyaluronic acid (HA) in this fluid help lubricate the soft tissues within the joint (boundary lubrication) and to a lesser degree, help lubricate the articular cartilage itself.
When problems related to the synovial membrane or the joint occur, synovial sepsis may result. Synovial sepsis in horses is life threatening and accurate diagnosis allowing prompt treatment is warranted.
A new study by British researchers: Robinson, C.S., E.R. Singer, M. Piviani, et al. assessed the diagnostic value of serum amyloid A (SAA) and D-lactate in blood and synovial fluid (SF) as diagnostic markers of synovial sepsis in horses and correlated them with total nucleated cell count (TNCC), percentage of neutrophils (%N) and total protein (TP) in SF.
Blood and SF SAA and D-lactate concentrations were determined in a case-control observational study including 112 horses (38 with synovial contamination or sepsis (SCS), 66 with non-septic intra-synovial pathology (NSISP) and 8 controls).
Key findings of the study were:
- Blood and synovial fluid SAA were significantly higher in horses with joint infections than in NSISP and control horses;
- SAA values were similar in NSISP and control horses; and
- Both blood and synovial fluid SAA had good sensitivity and specificity, meaning that they were sufficiently able to diagnose horses with joint infections when present and rule out joint infections when they were not.
This study shows that blood and synovial fluid SAA concentrations can help distinguish joint sepsis infections from nonseptic synovial pathology according to the researchers.