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Horse Trust research helps
horses heal themselves
Horses are exposed every day to the risk of injury or infection but, because their bodies
respond by creating protective inflammation, they can naturally repair injured tissue and
deal with the cause of the problem without veterinary intervention.
Neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, play a vital role in this process. However, if
the accumulation and activation of these neutrophils is not properly regulated by the
animal's body, they can actually become part of the problem, particularly in inflammatory
diseases such as colic, laminitis and heaves.
The Horse Trust is funding a project, led by Dr Fiona Cunningham at the Royal Veterinary College,
which will look at how movement of horse neutrophils out of the circulatory system and through
tissue to the site of inflammation are controlled by two chemical mediators produced naturally
in the horse's body: interleukin-8, which is produced in inflamed tissue, and annexin 1, much of
which is stored in the neutrophils. Both are thought to modulate this migration of neutrophils to
the site of inflammation.
A link between the amount of annexin 1 in neutrophils and circulating levels of cortisol will also
be investigated, as this naturally occurring anti-inflammatory steroid - like other steroids of the
same type - acts, in part, by releasing annexin 1.
The third part of the project will investigate the role played by protein kinase C, a family of
intracellular enzymes, in relation to the actions of Interleukin-8. In humans, it is involved in the
signalling process and may have the same function in the horse's immune response.
The studies will help to establish if neutrophil accumulation can be regulated in new ways that could
be used eventually to design different approaches to treating inappropriate inflammatory responses
associated with some common diseases of the horse.
Further, if a correlation with cortisol is established, the measurement of neutrophil annexin 1 could
provide a way of identifying individual animals in whom the protective inflammatory response is less
effective and for which early veterinary intervention will be beneficial.
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