Re: iron supplement

["Susan Garlinghouse" <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

Has your vet checked for parasites?  Or have you done a panacur purge anyway? (An obvious question but worth asking anyway), and checked for occult blood in the feces?  Or discussed a bone marrow biopsy or a chem panel with you? If just supplementing seems to solve the problem, well, that's fine---but a dietary deficiency of iron in horses is *really* unusual, and I guess my own strong inclination would be to try to find the cause rather than just treat the symptoms.  There are a number of diseases and/or toxic reactions that can cause anemia (chronic blood loss is by far the most common), so it might be really worthwhile trying to hunt it down.  I don't suppose there is any red maple in your area?  Or acorns?  Does he have access to sweet clover or anything in the onion family?  Have you noticed any differences in the color of his urine?

 

If your local vet is at his wit's end, wouldn't do any harm to ask for a blood sample to be sent to a tertiary referral center (translation, a vet school hospital) to let the high-priced talent have a look---they generally have more familiarity in looking for the zebras, so to speak.

 

The only concern I have against iron being supplemented is, as I mentioned, it's unusual for horses to have a dietary deficiency, though we can take a look at your ration to rule that out.  The other thing is that decreasing iron availability in the body is one of the body's natural defenses against bacterial infection.  Bacteria need iron in order to multiply, so the body decreases its availability as part of the immune response (how nifty is THAT?).  So by artificially supplementing iron and forcing higher serum iron levels (because the body has no pathways to excrete iron), you potentially can be sabotaging the body's ability to fight off infection.  When you take into account that endurance horses across the board already have high cortisol levels and other indications of a compromised immune system (I know this from the blood samples we've been collecting the past few years), then it's worth considering whether or not you *really* want to be supplementing with anything that further lowers the body's immune functions, right?

 

Anyway, there are some specific tests your vet can do to differentiate the anemia as being from a true iron deficiency (not dietary, more of one from chronic blood loss, ie from parasites) versus one resulting from chronic disease---total iron-binding capacity, serum ferritin and a bone marrow biopsy for iron stores.  My bet is that there's chronic blood loss occurring somewhere.

 

Keep us posted?  Dunno about anyone else, but I'd be really interested to hear how this works out.

 

Good luck!!!

 

Susan G

----- Original Message -----

From: SquareRock@aol.com

To: suendavid@worldnet.att.net ; ridecamp@endurance.net

Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2001 2:57 PM

Subject: Re: iron supplement

Hi Susan:

      Laredo's iron tends to fluctuate.  He became severely anemic in
January - to the point that a slow trot would send his HR into the 200's.  We
(the vet and I) are not sure why this happened.  He does not appear to have
been bleeding (internally or otherwise).  The only difference was that I had
taken him off Select II and because of the ice, he had a month or so off.  I
have had him on Lixotonic since then with great results.  Without the
supplement though, his iron tends to go down (don't have levels here with
me), though not as drastically.  Since we have just started to ride again
(since January), I am worried that his levels would get very low again.  

      Any ideas?

Linda S.