Horse I’ve been riding just started on Marquis. What can we expect in the weeks to come?
Thank you in advance for your input!
I may not be far behind you, so I feel for you!!! I’ve never dealt with EPM before either, but my young TB is showing some neuro issues so vet comes out Monday to test for EPM as well as wobblers (PLEASE NO!) I’m hoping for EPM. He’s only six and the best horse I’ve ever owned. I remember reading about Dino’s lymphoma and I’m glad he’s at least feeling better from that. On to the next thing, right? When do the horse Gods smile upon us? I must have missed it.
Oh, forgot to add you should try to get in touch with Mroades on this board. She has posted before about her horses recovering from EPM. I believe they were show horses as well.
Thanks, DWBLover! Who ever thought we’d be relieved in an EPM diagnosis. My greatest fear, initially, was that Dino had a giant tumor inside of him. Then, when we looked at his neck x-rays, I panicked about Wobblers too. At least with EPM, you feel like you’ve got a fighting chance. I’m wishing you and your horse all the best. Please keep us posted on your diagnosis, etc.
When diagnosed as EPM and treated with Marquis early, I have seen many horses return to 100% use after treatment.
I wish you all the best and try and think positive!
Thank you. I feel better already!
LIke SLW said if the EPM is caught early and treated appropriatly horses can make a full recovery.
I am about 3 months past diagnosis in my mare, and still on treatment.
But the difference I have seen in her is amazing. She is almost a completely different horse than she was before.
I had only had her a year or so when she was diagnosed and I think she may have had it brewing for some time as she was never quite right.
Guess thats why they say no horse is free!!
Good luck with your boy! I hope he recovers quickly~!
My horse was diagnosed last February w/ EPM. This was after I thought he needed treatment for ulcers. He never showed neuro symptoms, just complete topline wastage. He looked like he was ready for auction. I had been feeding him everything I could imagine to gain weight. When he started on Marquis, it took about 3 weeks to begin seeing results. After the second month, he looked great. I have to say it has been hit or miss w/ ideas and supplements to put his topline back on. He is 17hh and very lanky any way. I decided to try GO B.I.G. by Peak Performance. What a difference! This horse is in full work-we are doing hill work and a lot of flat work to help w/ his condition and muscle development. He has no residual effects from EPM. Do not give up hope. I also added about 10,000 iu of natural vitamin e to his diet. Also, give corn or canola oil w/ the Marquis, this helps the Marquis absorb into the system better. My horse went from being depressed, to the horse I remembered when I bought him. If you need more hope that a horse can come back, Karen O’Connor’s horse, St. Barth’s, just won the Fairhill 2*. EPM is a nasty disease, but there is hope. Just be persistent w/ the Marquis and hopefully you can move on.I did 2 months. My horse is 16, so I was concerned he may not handle it as well as a younger horse, but he has! Good Luck, and keep us updated!
<raises hand>
Mine was 5 going on 6 when he showed first signs of EPM. Very athletic boy, started stumbling behind, no other signs. Topline beautiful, attitude wonderful. Just this odd intermittent stumbling (“catching the toe”) on the right rear foot, and starting to be spooky. Vets found it too obscure to figure out, thought it was just youth, whatever. I was not convinced. I read up, pinpointed EPM as the most likely cause, and drove him to a highly rated lameness clinic to demand an IFAT test pulled. Vet did a nuro test and said yes he was showing EPM signs. IFAT results came back 1:160. My boy was put on the sulfa drugs for one month with understanding that he would go on Marquis if problem didn’t alleviate.
Stumbling disappeared, so did spookiness, and never returned. He was given the next three months off (my decision), was trailered back to clinic for re-evaluation, got the green light (“100% better” was the vet’s delighted comment)and went back to work to rebuild fitness. He is now back to full work with regular 6 month re-evaluations (my decision even tho vet said not necessary) for the next 2 years to ensure no relapse.
HOWEVER – depending upon where along the spinal cord the horse had issues and what it affected - eyes, legs, etc - it will take time for those areas to heal and rebuild the damaged nerves. It may take a year or more if it affected motor skills. So be patient, and make sure the work you do doesn’t go beyond what he’s capable of in regards to the damage done by the disease.
I personally know of 6 (older) horses that had EPM - 3 went back to full unlimited careers, 2 are back to a limited workload (due to residual damage still showing on a small level), 1 retired from jumping to a ringwork walk-trot career with another owner (apparently had sudden onset of EPM and fell over at a walk - twice - with former owner).
Mine is now 7 rising 8 and doing great. So, yes, there is hope. 
Please contact me…I have had alot of success in rehabbing epm horses, check out my website
Midwestnha.net
pdq,
Thanks for your response! Sounds like your case was as “mild” and mysterious as mine, despite the relatively high IFAT results of 1:160. Do you just have a neuro exam at 6 month intervals or do you check the blood again? I think I might want to do the same thing to ensure no relapse, especially since his symptoms are so subtle.
Din’s diagnosis has me thinking… how long has he had EPM? He’s always had trouble holding his lead around the corners (attributed to his youth and size) and has had some tripping from time to time (attributed to overgrown toes.) My vet said he could have had it for years. If this is the case, I have to assume there are lot of cases like this that simply go undiagnosed.
I don’t think 1:160 is high. I’ve heard of numbers through the roof, well into the 600’s.
My boy started showing EPM signs (odd, once-in-a-blue-moon stumbling on RR) 8 months before I finally found a vet (#3) to agree with me that, yes, my boy had a problem. My guy’s symptoms were mild, which made the diagnosis difficult…for vets #1 and #2, at any rate. Special shoeing made the symptoms go away almost 100% but…
I think the length of time (8 months) allowed the symptoms to advance enough for the #3 vet to be definitive over that of #1 and #2. Also within those 8 months I did everything humanly possible to systematically eliminate/disprove any structural/tack/conditioned related issue that could have been labeled a cause so I could accurately say “it is not so-and-so, or this-and-that”.
Just having a nuro test performed every 6 months; no blood work Vet #3 says I can do the blood if I want, but considers the visual test a more accurate view of whether the infection is active or not.
Do I personally suspect a lot of horses go untreated because the rider/owner/vet just can’t see/notice the subtle deterioration of gaits? Yes, I do. Blame the saddle, the farrier, the boarding operation, the weather, the terrain, the lack of conditioning, etc etc etc.
Makes you feel bad for the poor honest hardworking horse, doesn’t it?
EPM and Herbs
3 years ago my horse started dragging his back end and his face looked like it was paralyzed. We thought he had EPM, turned out he had the dubious honor of being the first horse in my state diagnosed with a different similar protoza before seen only in California, with the treatment being the same. So I did Marquis, the horse came through, but lost a ton of weight as it made him sick extremely sick. In a couple of months he was back to working and doing fine but the symptoms came on again and I was faced with the same problem. In the meantime I had been surfing the net like a mad woman and heard about a lot of folks who had great success with herbs.
Basically the cost of Marquis or Navigator is insane, especially when you may be treating an untrained horse. The cost of the treatment can quickly pass the price of a new TRAINED and sound horse, so where to go?
I have had great success with Silver Lining Herbs. There are other herbal companies out there, this happened to be the one I tried. My horse has been sound now for almost 4 years, at a fraction of the cost of the chemical treatments. I have told others and it has also worked for some, not for some… And I have read that herbs have helped many EPM horses!
SIDE NOTE THAT IS VERY IMPORTANT. There is a whole theory out there that we over vaccinate horses. EPM horses are suspected of having weaker immune systems, that is why one horse in a herd in the same environment will be the only one to get EPM. When we vaccinate we weaken the immune system, allowing the bug to come back. In fact when my horse’s symptoms came back, a vet told me it was probably 6 weeks from my vaccinating him and he was correct! I no longer vaccinate. Truly I am not sure why horses NEED to be vaccinated 1-2 times a year, humans don’t and dogs don’t so??? There are many vets that agree with this!
I am not an expert on this, I have written a very short summary of hours and days and weeks of searching for answers to help save my horse and I hope this may help someone out there! I have my horse on herbal dewormer which is supposed to knock any bug out of their system and an herbal immune support. Going on my fourth year of a sound and working horse!
All of mine were vaccinated only once when they were young. I don’t vaccinate older horses. So my boy’s onset of EPM was not related to vaccines. I suspect (and this is just me) that it may have been “encouraged” to settle in his system by the very VERY severe worm infestation he had as a weanling at his breeders. He was 3 months when I purchased him, and I had never seen such a bad worm load in any animal in my life.
I’m currently focused on keeping my boy as healthy as possible to ensure a top working immune system, and that includes keeping him as worm free as possible.
Now I’m confused whether a 1:160 IFAT is high or low – guess it’s on the high side of low or the low side of high. All I know is that my vet said the 1:160 was the highest he’d seen this year. Here’s some info from UC Davis on how the titer numbers correspond to likelihood of EPM.
10 <7%
20 16%
40 33%
80 55%
160 76%
320 89%
640 >95 %
My horse hasn’t had vaccinations since last January, but will likely NOT get them as scheduled this year. Cancer and EPM in a 5-year old horse? I think we’ve definitely got some immunity issues here.
As far as a complementary herbal treatment goes, does anyone have an opinion of Silver Lining vs. Meadowsweet Acres… or anything else?
Thanks!
Well, our IFAT test is off to UC Davis today. I’m just hoping for a definitive answer, either really low or really high. Lulu, how long did it take for you to get the results back? My vet said maybe a week? I’m on pins and needles. How’s Dino?
The IFAT test took exactly a week, and I was on pins and needles too. We’re now 5 days into treatment, and all is well. My trainer saw Dino take a couple of weird steps when she brought him in, but then we let him loose in the indoor and he looked totally sound – then again, he’s never really been unsound through this process. I’ve ordered an herbal immune supplement and am looking for an acupuncturist, which I understand helps in recovery. Hopefully, we’ll be one of those EPM success stories.
Hang in there dwblover! I’m thinking of you!
I’ll be thinking of you guys too! Thank you!!
Here’s an interesting suggestion from the Yahoo EPM group – using the over-the-counter anti-inflammatory Duralactin (aka MicroLactin) along with the Marquis treatment. I just ordered some from KV Vet supply. Supposedly, this powdered supplement has no side effects and can be used long term to reduce swelling associated with the disease. Here’s what someone who’s been through the whole EPM battle wrote to me earlier.
"Inflammation of the CNS can be what is causing the neurological symptoms
or stiffness. The MicroLactin controls the neutrophils (type of white blood cell), which
limits inflammation. It has no side effects, and doesn’t interfere with
other drugs.
By the time the inflammation is obvious to the human eye (neuro symptoms),
it may be causing permanent damage to his CNS. If you can spend the $55 per
month, I would definitely treat before the possibility of treatment crisis,
and through the month."
I did a little googling and found some promising research papers about MicroLactin’s effectiveness in a range of situations, so I figure why not go ahead and give it a try.
P.S. Is it me or do there seem to be a lot of EPM diagnoses right now?
Thanks for that info. I do think there are a lot of EPM diagnoses right now. I wonder if people are just so much more aware of it now, which leads to more testing than has ever been done before. I know when people were just using the western blot there were probably quite a few false positives, but the IFAT is so much more accurate. Why are horses so darn fragile?
Dino got his 8th dose of Marquis today. He seems a little stiff behind, but is sound and happy. Today, oddly, he let me scratch his ears for the first time in almost a year. Also, we noticed that he hasn’t bullied around the other geldings in his pasture at all this week, which is unusual for him. I’m braced for the die-off reaction, which I understand usually happens around day 10-14. He’ll start on the anti-inflammatory Duralactin tomorrow for the duration of the treatment.
