One of the most common mosquito-borne horse diseases is Eastern equine encephalitis, which is about 95 percent fatal, and usually affects horses around five years of age. Learn about other mosquito-borne horse diseases, such as the West Nile virus, with information from a veterinarian in this free video on horse diseases.
I'm Dr. Gary Garcia of Keystone Equine Associates. We are in Odessa, Florida outside of Tampa. We are going to just say a little bit about mosquito borne equine diseases. Here in Florida probably the most devastating diseases we have with mosquitoes is Eastern Equine Encephalitis. Last year we had over 130 cases of this disease. It is about 95% fatal and it effects horses usually around five years of age. It can be any horse but we see an average of about five years of age and they're usually unvaccinated horses or a horse whose vaccines have long been overdue. It is considered an arbovirus and what you see with this disease is you see sometimes fever, depression, ataxia, that ataxia or stumbling can lead to recumbency, laying down of the horse and eventually death. The thing to remember with this disease is we see it in humans however, it is not transmitted from horse to humans. There is a bird vector in between there so humans are being bit by the same mosquitoes that the horses are and both the human and the horse are equally susceptible. We do note that sometimes birds die from this virus if we see birds dying we start thinking that we're going to have a heavy infestation, a heavy disease season of equine encephalitis. So it is a reportable disease and we can vaccinate for this disease, it is very preventable so we encourage vaccination in Florida and the Southern regions every six months without doubt. We begin vaccinating our foals at three months of age and it should be a series of vaccines in young horses and a horse that is unvaccinated should be an initial booster and then every six months. One other disease we see that is mosquito born that is more recent is West Nile. We have had a vaccine against West Nile disease since November of 2002 and West Nile can exhibit some of the same signs as Equine Encephalitis however, when you see, it's a more insidious, more constant, more gradual onset of clinical signs and we see more of a muscle tremor or muscle fasciculations with West Nile. Again if you have not vaccinated a horse for either one of these, these are core vaccinations that should and must be done to your horse. What's important in keeping your horse currently vaccinated is when we go out on emergency and someone says my horse is stumbling or falling down if we have current vaccines on these horses for say example Encephalitis and West Nile we can pretty much rule those out and start looking at some other things and not waste time trying to diagnose disease that we should have been vaccinating for. Please get your horse vaccinated. These are core vaccines that every horse should be vaccinated with. 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 on to our website at keystoneequine.com. Thank ou.
Specialty: Horse Health
