Rare Horse Diseases

One rare horse disease is glanders, a potentially fatal disease in humans that can cause lung lesions, lymph node lesions and nostril lesions in horses. Find out more about rare horse diseases and mutations with information from a veterinarian in this free video on rare horse diseases.

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I'm Dr. Gary Garcia, Keystone Equine Associates. We are outside of Tampa, Florida in Odessa, Florida. A rare horse diseases is one of the most disturbing things that we see, and I guess that it is rare in a sense that we start seeing mutations. More commonly swine flu is a mutation of a swine virus that has mutated into the human population. More recently we have seen equine influenza mutate into a dog. So we worry about these mutations, and how they are going to effect people in the future. Because these viruses seem to just change, and the animals seem to be a good reservoir for some of these viruses. So that is disturbing. One other rare disease an old professor of mine that was a British professor back in vet school. He use to talk about a disease called glanders. And this was a bacterial disease that back in World War I the Germans actually used as a biological attack agent. And so given our current climate of terrorism there is a lot of fear that this disease may be reintroduced. And so there is a lot of research going on. And so glanders it's about one hundred percent fatal in humans. In horses it cause lung lesions, lymph node lesions, nostril lesions, and people inadvertently pick it up, and then it mimics the same symptoms in people. And so it is a reportable disease we have not had it in this country, and we test for every horse that comes into the country. Again this is Dr. Gary Garcia of Keystone Equine Associates in Odessa, Florida. We urge you to contact your local equine veterinarian for further information and questions. Or you can log onto our website at keystoneequine.com. Thank you.