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A Fresh Look at Heaves

Jan 20, 2015
Is it common to hear your horse’s cough echoing from his dusty stall? If so, don’t dismiss it as you would your own throat tickle in the same setting—as something that will resolve on its own. Your horse might be confined in this setting, unable to avoid the dust, and he could have developed a chronic breathing problem called heaves. These horses suffer impaired respiratory function (and, hence, athletic performance) due to airway congestion and constriction. The condition generally results from breathing such dust, along with the mold particles and pollen innate to the environments in which we keep our horses.
 
In this article we will describe the mechanisms behind heaves and what researchers are discovering about it.
 
What is Heaves? 
 
Historically, many people believed horses with heaves suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)—a common lung disease in humans that causes difficulty breathing, says Rose Nolen-Walston, DVM, Dipl. ACVIM, assistant professor of large animal internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center. 
 
“It is a chronic disease, and it does cause obstruction … and it is a lung disease,” she says. “But COPD in humans is very different from heaves in horses.”
 
Source: TheHorse