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[RC] Help for Anemic Horse - Eleanor KellonChristina,
Could you please post the rest or the CBC results, specifically MCV, MCH and MCHC, RDW if you have it. Do you have any previous CBCs for comparison?
First thing is that fit horses and older horses will often run in that range when at rest and be completely normal. To know if he's truly anemic, you should retest immediately after exercise or a low dose of epinephrine. Those stimulate the spleen to empty so that you get a more accurate picture of red cells and red cell reserves.
I had a CBC, Basic Equine Screen, and Selenium test done for the first time - just to get a base line and on the suggestion of another endurance rider whose does a CBC once a year.
Your questions were:
1) Is there any risk giving an endurance horse (versus a pleasure horse or horse in a different discipline) a red blood cell builder?
Depends. If you are chosing a supplement based on high iron content, you're probably headed in the wrong direction. Anemia related to a dietary deficiency of iron has never been reported in horses, likely because their diet is always more than adequate. Iron is very efficiently "recycled" in horses. When red cells age and are removed, the iron is taken from their hemoglobin and stored for reuse. There are no pathways for active iron excretion into the bile or urine. The horse needs a maximum of 40 ppm of iron in the diet, while most hays contain from 2 to 10 times more than that.
The most common cause of anemia I see in performance horses is oxidative stress, which is only worsened by iron. Common deficiencies contributing to this are vitamin E, selenium, copper and zinc. Copper is particularly important because it is part of transferrin, a protein that shuttles iron around in the body.
Iron is very proinflammatory. To check your horse's iron status accurately you need serum iron, serum transferrin and serum ferritin. Kansas State is the only place in the world that can do the ferritin. The web site is:
If you do that, please write on the form requesting they send me a copy. I have a collection of several hundred now.
2) Regarding red cell blood builders: are those considered "oxygen carriers", which is a prohibited substance under Appendix B.15 of the AERC drug policy?
No, they are not oxygen carriers.
3) Any suggestions or something else I should consider?
As above, I'd check him after stimulating the spleen to empty as a starting point. E, Se, copper and zinc deficiency much more likely than iron. If the white cell differential counts - % of neutrophils and % of lymphocytes - are normal, wouldn't worry about the white count either. If he's much lower on lymphocytes than neutrophils, chronic infection (e.g. Lyme) or Cushing's is possible.
Eleanor M. Kellon, V.M.D. Equine Nutritional Solutions 58 Maple Farm Road Ephrata, PA 17522 New web site (still under construction but open) www.drkellon.com
Results came in last week. Of concern were the following low scores:
RBC: 6.08 (range is 5.5-12.5)
WBC: 4.4 (range is 5.5-12.5)
Hemoglobin: 10.3 (11.0-17.0)
Hematocrit: 28.1 (32.0-50.0)
The condition/quality of existing WBC's and RBC's is great, he's just not producing enough.
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