Experience of bowel disease in horses - please help

[Victoria Amy]

Time is running out for my 12hh welshy.

At the age of 15, she seems to be suffering from an inflammatory bowel disease in her large intestine that is preventing her from digesting food. I'd be very grateful to hear of any experience of such a disease in horses, and how it has been treated. My vets have been absolutely brilliant, but they are running out of treatment ideas.

My pony first began to lose condition after the winter - I initially put it down to normal winter weight loss, or a high worm count (subsequently rewormed her) - but then she started to get very lethargic, moving slowly and refusing to eat. After briefly thinking she had ragwort poisoning, the vet came and took some blood. Test revealed that her blood protein levels were extremely low, meaning her heart rate was up very high in order to keep her blood pressure up. She also had oedema on her stomach, indicating liver problems, and a bacterial infection, and was scouring badly. She was prescribed steroids and antibiotics, and her condition began to improve.

However, she waned again about a month later, in late June. More vet visits and extensive blood/ultrasound/biopsy testing seemed to show that she has an inflammatory bowel condition. She went back on steroids, and her dose was increased, and then for a while she was almost back to her old self, gaining lots of weight and condition. She had colicky episode at one point, but this seemed more to do with the lush pasture than her bowel condition.

Then she started to get lethargic again, and the vet upped her dose of steroids again, but these now appear not to be working. She is getting dangerously thin, and scouring very badly. She recently had another course of antibiotics, just in case she had an infection, but these have not improved her condition. Somewhat surprisingly, she doesn't have oedema, and is constantly eating, but, unable to digest her food, her condition continues to deteriorate.

My vet has now prescribed some stronger steroids than the Prednidale tablets my horse was having, but he is not optimistic that these will work. I did ask him whether the bowel problems were stopping the steroids being absorbed, but he said steroids are absorbed in the small intestine, and her problem rests in her large intestine. As mentioned previously, the vets have been great throughout my pony's illness - I'm turning to online fora because we are running out of options, and, with winter coming, and my pony continuing to lose weight despite eating well, I am more desperate than ever to find her a cure.

If you have any experience of this, or any suggestions of how to treat my pony, I'd be grateful to hear. I'd do anything to make her better. Thank you.

 

[Hexx]

My horse had this - sadly, the outcome was not good.

He was diagnosed with IBD after a dramatic weight loss over the space of around 3 weeks (he had colic episodes over the previous 12 months, this was the start of the issue) - however, there was a good chance that it could also be diffuse tumours, but because he was so ill, the vet couldn't risk a general anaesthetic to do a biopsy to confirm the cancer diagnosis. The treatment was the same whether it was IBD or cancer.

He was on massive doses of steroids and not maintaining weight, despite 4 feeds a day and unlimited hay/haylege. He ate the hard feed but would not touch the hay/haylage, so we put him on fast fibre and redid-grass, which he did like. Unfortunately, then he developed a secondary infection in his neck which meant antibiotics.

One of the issues was that due to the high level dose steroids and the fact we were trying to get proteins into him to maintain his weight, he was at risk of developing laminitis - which he, unfortunately, did - we had to cut out the steroids and reduce his feeds to combat the laminitis. Sadly he was pts in March due to the laminitis.

I am keeping my fingers crossed for your pony - and hope that someone has a more positive story to share with you.

 

[catembi]

Mine had protein losing enteropathy. If this is your girl's diagnosis (I hope it isn't!) my old posts from 2007 might be on here if you search.

Everything crossed for you.

T x

 

[impresario08]

I lost my boy to inflammatory bowel disease :'(

 

[BuzzyBea]

My boy was diagnosed with IBD in January.

This came about as a result of many incidents of colic. He had a displacment in December with a week at Rossdales but they managed to move it without surgery.

A month later her was back at Rossdales after many further colic episodes. The initial plan was to gastrascope as a final option and then PTS but then after lengthy discussions with the surgeon we went for a laproscopy that showed IBD in the small intestine and colon. Then followed an intensive course of steroids and box rest. Over the following six months he did pretty well with only the odd bout of mild colic but there was always a reason that we could find for each bout. At this point he had another course of steroids followed by antacids. By August the bouts became more frequent and more intense until by early September he had his worst episode since surgery which resulted in an impaction. It was at that point we decided that he had had enough and put him to sleep.

We found it such a difficult illness to manage even though he didn't struggle to keep weight on. I wish you every success and hope that you find a way of living with it. We tried everything and spent everything but sadly have no horse at the end of it all.