PSSM suspicions and testing?

[P.forpony]

Advice please!
I know there is a lot of knowledge on here after trawling through a lot of old threads and spending the last few days reading everything I can find online, after becoming suspicious one of mine may be showing signs.

I think I'm potentially looking at type 2 though.
I'm going to send off a type 1 test mainly for elimination, but the question is, is it worth doing the type 2 test?

I can't find anything to suggest it has been independently validated, only an article saying that there is little statistical significance between groups of affected horses showing these variants and groups of unaffected horses.

Her diet is already PSSM suitable with the exception of additional vitamin E. Which will be arriving soon from forageplus.
I'm going to try and keep her a bit warmer than usual - carefully though, because I usually rug very lightly even when fully clipped and don't want to end up cooking her!

I'd love to hear any opinions or experiences of type 2 testing, or any suggestions of things I can try to see if they help other than the Vitamin E and warmth.

 

[Littlewills]

You need to ask on one of the facebook groups. PSSM & MFM Awareness is one of the better Facebook groups. The advice I see for PSSM on here tends to be awful!

Sadly type 2 is a progressive disease and I know most struggle to keep them in work. I would always test. Treatment varies within the specific types, so knowing which you are dealing with can make a huge difference. The test isnt backed up with peer reviewed research as of yet. It is underway but it wont be done imminently. But for me it would always be worth it. and this is backed up by what I see from others struggling with PSSM. You could always try blood tests and a muscle biopsy first, but this is very hit and miss, esp with type 2.

A basic cover all bases approach for type 2 tends to be based around additional protein. Vitamin e and heavy rugging is treatment for Type 1, although some Type 2s need it as well. As low potassium as you can get is also helpful. There seems to be a very strong correlation between horses that react to alfalfa and PSSM, which is linked to the potassium in alfalfa, so if you feed that remove it from the diet.

 

[P.forpony]

Thanks, I joined the group yesterday so have been making my way through the posts bit by bit.

I havent come across the potassium link so thats interesting, although I actually stopped feeding alfalfa last week by coincidence as I was given a bag of a new type of conditioning chaff to test at work so shall continue to leave it out to see if it makes a difference.