Interesting. Maybe not necessarily Earth shattering. But research is always good.
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Interesting! Unfortunately they don’t seem to have examined if one precedes the other, just that horses with forelimb lameness also show muscle atrophy. It makes sense that lameness would cause muscle atrophy, but I would not be surprised if muscle atrophy (of various origins) also resulted in lameness. Nonetheless, like you said - research is always good, and you gotta start somewhere!
Will be curious to see the full paper once it’s published!
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What I found fascinating is that symmetry wasn’t affected regardless of where the lameness was. I would have expected some asymmetry in at least the unilaterally lame horses.
What isn’t surprising at all is the atrophy in the lame horses.
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Agree that part is interesting. I think most of us expected some asymmetry.
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I don’t think that is so surprising if you think about it as a whole horse picture. You might get asymmetrical muscling with unilateral lameness but it would be of the more superficial locomotive muscle layers, right? Like the trapezius and the muscles on the outside of the shoulder. And the lats. And wouldn’t those muscles be working even harder if the posture changes such that the multifidus atrophies and is not supporting the sling as well?
With how much hind end lameness can affect back movement, I was a bit surprised that hind limb lameness didn’t seem to have the same effect. So then I wonder how much of the front limb lameness is caused by the lack of muscle versus the other way around. It would seem that if the sling is not working as well that maybe the horse is taking more weight on the front end than it should.
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I agree on the likelihood of asymmetry there, and almost guaranteed the longer or more severe the unilateral lameness
But I would have thought that unilateral hind or front lameness would have affected how straight the horse can/can’t move, regularly, which I’d think would start impacting the central musculature. Maybe that just takes longer than the study horses had been lame?
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