"Pour favoriser le diagnostic des chevaux atteints, Boehringer Ingelheim soutient une campagne de dépistage en offrant un dosage ACTH pour les cas suspects."
Boehringer Ingelheim are offering free ACTH testing for horses in France through VetAgro, the vet school at Lyon. The free test is offered for horses over the age of 10, that have presented with laminitis with no obvious cause. Given that probably over 90% of laminitis cases are endocrine, which will be EMS and/or PPID, this will be most first time cases of laminitis. Horses under 10 can get PPID too, so it's a shame that the free test excludes younger horses. The protocol calls for blood to be collected into EDTA (purple topped tube), centrifuged within 2 hours, chilled until despatch to the lab or frozen before despatch. As ACTH levels decline in unchilled blood, TLS recommends freezing the samples before despatch (but the blood must be separated by centrifuge, not by gravity, before the plasma is frozen, otherwise falsely high ACTH results are likely to be seen).
More information:
Free test offer
Dysfonction Par Intermedia (maladie de Cushing) Cheval
Protocol
NB insulin should also be tested in all horses with endocrine laminitis. ACTH is diagnostic for PPID, but insulin is suggestive of laminitis risk.
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