Equine eye injuries can be difficult to address and harder to heal – and they can be very painful for the horse. Any therapy that can be used to speed healing and decrease down time is welcomed by those who have had to administer eye meds to a horse.
A new experiment has shown that adding commercially available amniotic membrane to traditionally used antibiotics, antifungals, and pupil-dilating agents did not speed healing when compared with traditional medical treatments alone.
Drs. Victoria Lyons, Wendy Townsend, George Moore and Siqi Liang induced superficial corneal ulcers in both eyes of 10 healthy horses. One eye was treated with amniotic extract and the other eye was treated with the extract only to serve as the control. Both eyes were treated with topical therapies that included antifungal, antibiotics and drugs to dilate the pupil.
The ulcers were stained and photographed every 12 hours until they completely healed. Eyes treated with the amniotic fluid healed between 68.2 to 162.7 hours; eyes that used the control healed in 87.4 to 167.6 hours. No matter which therapy was used, the eyes healed in two distinct phases: a rapid initial phase and a slower second phase with a visible duration.
The researchers determined that adding a commercially available amniotic membrane extract to other topical medications did not significantly increase the rate of healing.
Read the article here.
Read more at EquiManagement.
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