Tag: Horse Care

The California Retirement Management Account (CARMA), a non-profit organization that provides funding for retirement of California-raced Thoroughbred horses, announced Friday that Billy Koch has been unanimously elected board president.

Nominated by his predecessor, Candace Coder-Chew, whose term expired in January, Koch fills the position perfectly by bringing a key perspective and infectious enthusiasm to the board.

As the Founder and Managing partner of Little Red Feather Racing, one of the largest and most successful syndicates in horse racing, Billy Koch has his finger on the pulse of the future of Thoroughbred ownership.

“Retirement of our horses is an absolute priority,” said Koch. “These amazing animals are the sole reason any of us are in this game and they deserve every ounce of our support once their racing careers are over. This responsibility falls on owners, trainers, jockeys, players, ADW providers, and our racetrack partners. Organizations like CARMA and our very own LRF Cares continue to step up, but we need more assistance from all areas of the horse racing world to make sure our horses are continually cared for. I am honored to serve as the next President of CARMA and look forward to working with the dedicated and passionate industry professionals that make up CARMA's board of directors as we continue to fulfill our mission of funding racehorse retirement.”

“There is no one who deserves this title more than Billy,” said CARMA's past-president Candace Coder-Chew. “He has been a committed and active member of the board and executive committee since his appointment in 2015 and I am confident he will lead the organization with the energy and enthusiasm he is known for.”

In his previous role as Treasurer, Koch was instrumental in developing and implementing the CARMAthon virtual fundraisers in 2020 and 2021. Under his leadership, these popular online events raised more than $300,000 for retired racehorses. During a time of great uncertainty for non-profits across the country, Koch's ingenuity, and creativity lead to the creation of CARMA's most successful events to date.

“We are thrilled Billy has agreed to lead the organization,” said CARMA Executive Director Lucinda Lovitt, “His enthusiasm and dedication to this industry is without compare, so having him serve as President is of great benefit to the organization.”

The post California Retirement Management Account Elects Billy Koch As Board President appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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When the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) released a summary of the necropsy report from Medina Spirit on Feb. 11, people had a lot of questions — particularly as to why the necropsy could not pinpoint a specific cause of the 3-year-old's death.

Medina Spirit died suddenly after the conclusion of a workout at Santa Anita Park in early December.

The CHRB hosted a media teleconference after the report's release, with California Animal Health and Food Safety director Dr. Ashley Hill alongside University of California-Davis veterinarians Drs. Benjamin Moeller and Dr. Francisco Uzal to help give some context to the findings.

A few key takeaways:

• It's not uncommon for sudden death cases to have no cause of death identified after necropsy. Sudden deaths among racehorses have proven challenging to pathologists and researchers around the world for some time. Uzal estimated that in a case like Medina Spirit's, where the horse drops dead with no apparent musculoskeletal injury, the exact cause remains unknown about half the time.In one 2011 study published in the peer-reviewed Equine Veterinary Journal, a research team looked at 268 sudden death incidents in Thoroughbred racehorses around the world and found a definitive cause of death in only 53 percent of them. A presumptive cause of death was identified in another 25 percent, with 22 percent remaining completely unexplained.
• That's partially because it's really hard to uncover a heart condition in a horse whose heart is no longer beating. We've written before about how horses don't have “heart attacks” the way people do. In humans, the condition we call a “heart attack” is a blockage of a coronary artery that supplies the heart, which results in tissue death in the heart muscle. Dead tissue is pretty easy to see in an autopsy, as it will be discolored and often dark.According to Hill, researchers currently believe that athletic horses probably don't experience that kind of tissue death that leaves behind evidence. Instead, the heart problems they suffer are likely misfirings of the electrical impulses that travel through the heart, regulating its beat. Once the heart isn't beating, there's no really good way to test how electrical signals were going through it.

  “Looking through the microscope at the tissues doesn't give you information about the electrical conduction through the heart,” she said.

  “There are no gross or microscopic lesion specific to that condition,” echoed Uzal. “That's why we go by indirect indicators like pooling of the blood in the lungs. When we see that, we think that the heart stopped pumping.”

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• But what about the congestion and bleeding in the lungs and spleen? Those are typical for a sudden or suspected cardiac death in a horse. Once the heart suddenly becomes unable to pump blood to or from other organs, it gets stuck wherever it is. “Congestion” cited by pathologists in this context refers to the presence of lots of blood inside the vessels (rather than the mucus you're used to thinking of when you have a head cold). Sometimes, pathologists find that organs with a large blood supply, like the horse's lungs or spleen, may have small amounts of blood leak out of those vessels around the time it stops pumping normally.
• Are there other issues that could cause those findings? Yes. Uzal said pulmonary hemorrhage in the lungs could cause similar findings in a horse's organs. Certain types of allergic reactions also could produce the same thing.
• Are racehorses the only ones who suffer from these sudden cardiac deaths? No, but we know more about the frequency of occurrence in racehorses because of how many of them have necropsies done. Several racing jurisdictions have programs in place that require them to perform necropsies on horses who die in racing and training, so racehorses are necropsied more broadly and consistently than other types of horses, but Hill said we've seen these kinds of deaths in other sports and breeds, too.”I think one of the reasons we have as much information about this in racehorses as we do is the CHRB necropsy review program we've had in place since 1990,” said Hill. “That's not true for other types of equine performance, so it doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but it means we're able to see the horses and do the work on necropsies.”
• Researchers are trying to determine if there is a genetic link with these electrical issues in the equine heart. Uzal and Hill said that both UC-Davis and the University of Minnesota are collecting samples on sudden death cases and analyzing those to see if they can find any genetic commonalities. Similar electrical disorders in humans can sometimes be passed genetically. Samples from Medina Spirit's body were archived for this purpose.
• What about the drug testing done on the horse's body? Urine, blood, and hair samples were taken on the horse in the minutes after his death at the track. The CHRB is in charge of testing the samples collected at the racetrack to look for any violations of drug rules. Blood and urine samples are also taken from the horse's body upon arrival at the pathology lab, and those were tested as part of the necropsy process. There was some confusion on the call about whether hair was tested and by who, but it seems the CHRB did perform hair testing on samples collected at the track, with no positives for prohibited substances detected. Hair samples were collected upon the horse's arrival at the pathology lab, and those samples have been stored for future testing, should it become necessary. Necropsy sample testing did find furosemide and omeprazole, which matched veterinary records submitted to the CHRB.It seems the UC-Davis lab did test for EPO and several EPO mimetics, but while some testing was refereed by other laboratories, Hill said they were unable to find another domestic lab willing to accept the liability to do referee EPO testing in this case prior to the release of the report.
• About that thyroxine testing… A Cornell laboratory performed testing for thyroxine and found no abnormalities. This does come with the caveat that while the lab's thyroxine testing method has been validated, it's designed for the testing of thyroxine levels in living animals. Most of the time, thyroxine testing is done in veterinary patients to decide whether they're hyperthyroid or hypothyroid and need medication. Only in rare instances are people testing samples from dead horses, so there is no test that is engineered for this specifically. The test also cannot tell the difference between naturally-occurring thyroid hormones and synthetic hormones.Scientists on the call said they spent about three years ordering thyroxine tests on sudden death cases submitted for necropsy, hoping to find some connection between elevated thyroxine levels and sudden deaths. Elevated levels could be indicative of either a horse receiving synthetic thyroid hormones, or an individual having naturally-elevated levels. It's also known that regularly-exercised animals probably have higher natural levels of thyroid hormones.

  Those tests over a three-year period did not result in any significant findings. We don't know if that's because the tests were designed for living animals and were unable to correctly capture elevated thyroid hormones from post-mortem samples, or if the horses submitted really didn't have elevated thyroid hormones — or if it's there's not an association between elevated thyroid hormones and sudden death risk.

• No, betamethasone probably didn't have any impact on the horse's death. The veterinary team said that the typical length of action for injected betamethasone is about a week from administration. Of course, in the case of Medina Spirit, his connections insist he was exposed to the drug via a topical administration. We know less about the way topical, skin-based administrations of betamethasone are metabolized, but Hill and Moeller agreed there was no reason to suspect that kind of administration in May could be having an appreciable impact on the horse in December.
• Blea's removal from the death investigation wasn't hugely impactful to the necropsy process, according to the UC-Davis team. Much has been made of the removal of CHRB equine medical director Dr. Jeff Blea from the Medina Spirit necropsy process, after the state veterinary board issued an emergency suspension of Blea's veterinary license. But for those unfamiliar with the process, Blea was never going to be involved in the actual dissection of a horse's body nor the testing process in the event of an on-track death — that is left to pathologists and toxicologists. The equine medical director's role has always been to assemble the necropsy and toxicology reports and present them to the CHRB while answering questions about the veterinary jargon included there. Those on the media teleconference said that while other processes normally undertaken by Blea have been impacted by his suspension by the university, death investigations like this one were not among them.
• This robust process is pretty standard for the CHRB necropsy program. Although the decision to send some samples to outside laboratories and ask for peer review of the report and necropsy photos was specific to this case, the level of post-mortem testing is standard for all fatalities in California — including the extensive testing for foreign substances.
• So, what's next? An official veterinarian, safety steward, and member of the board of stewards will review the necropsy as well as other evidence collected in the death investigation and issue their own report, which will also be distributed to the public. If any CHRB rule violations are uncovered, they will be adjudicated at that point.

The post Medina Spirit Teleconference: Scientists Explain Why Sudden Deaths Are Hard To Pinpoint appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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The California Horse Racing Board released the following summary of the necropsy of Medina Spirit on Friday:

Due to widespread public interest, the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) is releasing the attached report on the necropsy/postmortem examination of Medina Spirit, the 3-year-old colt that died suddenly at the end of a workout on the morning of December 6, 2021, at Santa Anita Park. This examination was performed pursuant to CHRB Rule 1846.5 (Postmortem Examination).

Trained by Bob Baffert, Medina Spirit, winner of the 2021 Kentucky Derby, last raced on November 6, 2021, when he finished second in the Breeders' Cup Classic at Del Mar.

Postmortem examination of Medina Spirit was performed by a diagnostic team with expertise in pathology, toxicology, and equine drug testing, who are part of the California Animal Health and Food Safety (CAHFS) diagnostic laboratory system of the University of California-Davis (UC Davis) School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM). Team members included Dr. Francisco Uzal, Dr. Javier Asin Ros, Dr. Monika Samol, Dr. Robert Poppenga, and Dr. Benjamin Moeller.  Dr. John Pascoe, executive associate dean of the SVM, working with CAHFS Director Dr. Ashley Hill, had administrative oversight of the process.

Medina Spirit was transported to the CAHFS San Bernardino laboratory for the necropsy, which included gross examination of the body and internal organs, and specimen collection for microscopic examination, toxicology, drug testing, and genetic testing, with specimens also stored for possible future testing. After the examination was completed, Medina Spirit was cremated.

During the necropsy, the horse was examined for obvious causes of death and visually apparent abnormalities. Tissue samples were collected from the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidney, stomach, intestines, muscle, brain, spinal cord, testicles, and other glands, and were examined under the microscope for evidence of abnormalities.  Liver tissue was tested for heavy metals (including, amongst others, cobalt), anticoagulants, pesticides, environmental contaminants, drugs, and other products. A blood sample was tested for thyroxine at Cornell University. Blood, urine, and aqueous humor samples were screened for the presence of hundreds of substances, both legal medications and prohibited drugs, including, amongst others, erythropoietin (EPO), clenbuterol, and betamethasone.

Samples of heart tissue were sent to the University of Minnesota and to the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory as part of ongoing research programs, in collaboration with the CHRB, investigating possible genetic causes of sudden death in racehorses.

After completion of all testing, the finalized report (with the necropsy photographs, microscopic sections, and toxicology and drug testing results) was provided to experts (Dr. Laura Kennedy [University of Kentucky] and Dr. Grant Maxie [University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada]) for independent review.

A definitive cause of death was not established despite extensive testing. Omeprazole (an anti-ulcer medication) and furosemide (aka Lasix, a diuretic) were detected in blood and urine samples consistent with the medication report filed with CHRB by the attending veterinarian. No other drugs, heavy metals (including cobalt), or toxicants were detected. Thyroxine levels were below normal reference limits. Degenerative joint disease was seen in the fetlock and elbow joints. The microscopic changes in various tissues were mild and did not suggest a specific cause of death. The swollen lungs and foam in the trachea (windpipe), enlarged spleen, and congestion and mild hemorrhages in other tissues seen on the postmortem examination are common in horses dying suddenly, and are compatible with, but not specific for, a cardiac cause of death.

 An international study found that causes of exercise-related sudden death in racehorses are similar across multiple countries.  In that study, a cause of death was determined with certainty in ~53% of cases, a presumptive cause was established in 25%, and in ~22%, the specific cause of death could not be determined. Research is continuing worldwide, including at UC Davis to better understand and prevent these catastrophic deaths.

The process now continues with the required review of the necropsy report pursuant to CHRB Rule 1846.6 (Postmortem Examination Review).  Based on subject matter expertise, Dr. Alina Vale has been identified as the Official Veterinarian to perform the review. Additionally, a safety steward and a member of the Board of Stewards will be assigned to participate in the review.  The report will be generated pursuant to the rule and published by the CHRB. Any potential rule violations uncovered in this process will be investigated by the CHRB and would result in a complaint and possible disciplinary action.  This process takes place for every fatality occurring at a CHRB regulated facility.

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