Strangles outbreak and quarantine

[Scribbler]

I think it may be folk medicine concept from a prior era

Like how we used to think tying up was because horse had a day off, not a genetic metabolic issue

[Bluey]

@Scribbler

Strangles is a very old disease. In the period where we knew it was bacterial but before we had tests to understand some horses were carriers or silently infected, “it lives in the ground” would have been a plausible explanation for how you could get an outbreak seemingly out of nowhere.

I’ve actually heard people say that recurring lymphangitis (another staph bacteria) also “lives in the soil” but since very few horses contract it, I personally think that the recurrences are about individual immune systems and health. I knew two horses at our facility to have recurring lymphangitis that eventually led to euthanasia, from different barns and different owners, not much in common except late teens. It’s a horrible persistent disease.

Staph bacteria are everywhere as we learned with “flesh eating disease” and cystic acne in humans, but who gets afflicted is a bit random.

A bit of history, one of the first laboratories to make a strangles vaccine in the 1950’s was Franklin Laboratories from Denver.
At that time our broodmare herd was going thru an infection run and our vet collected samples from them for studies and that were used to make one of the first vaccines.

Seems that mostly some of the youngsters were coming down with it as a rite of passage, a few every crop of yearlings and new two year olds in training, but not all?
We think most were exposed as youngsters, why rarely an older horse was sick and if one was, they were really sick.

Maybe not being endemic any more and acquiring some immunity as youngsters is why more older horses when exposed today seem to get sick?

Edited to add, once we had a vaccine, we rarely saw another case, other than a horse coming in for training already infected.

[theresak]

@Small_Change

100% understand, and I don’t think I explained myself well. I just wonder how much of perpetuating the soil-borne story is a lack of education, and how much is because it fits a narrative of it not being negligence, but rather just bad luck when an outbreak crops up. Not that people necessarily are being negligent when an outbreak occurs, just that because of the stigma surrounding strangles, it is assumed that someone wasn’t as cautious as they should be.

The boarding barn I’m at uses this myth. Realistically we probably have a couple of carriers that are start shedding occasionally when under stress and if there are any unexposed horses in the herd…

I bought a 2 year old from Canada and knew he came unvaccinated for strangles. I planned to let him settle in and then vaccinate but he got strangles 4 weeks after arriving. It was a strange strain because horses initially presented like they had a flu virus (and a few tested positive for a flu). So he was in my older horse’s stall for a few days sharing a wall with another horse. Even my vet didn’t think it was strangles until the lymph nodes started swelling. Neither the neighbor horse nor my older horse got sick, but both were previously active show horses and likely exposed to a lot of things in their past. My 2 year old was kicked outside in a quarantine paddock with another horse that was new to the farm and got sick. I took care of them for weeks while lymph nodes abscessed without spreading it to any other horse on the property (and continued riding and caring for my older horse). Not all people were as careful or watchful of the earliest symptoms and we ended up having it spread to both outside board pastures and eventually the main/big stall barn where it slowly made it’s way through horses.

We had a couple of horses get really sick, one with purpura haemorrhagica. But even the vets were having a hard time getting all of the obviously sick horses (one with active abscesses) to culture positive for strangles.

Multiple barns in the area ended up with strangles - it is so hard to stop it spreading and is very easily spread by people traveling between barns. I remember reading an article from a vet in TX who said even though horse people are super worried about spreading vesicular stomatitis, she worried much more about spreading strangles and would always go home and change and wash all her clothes, change boots, disinfect everything, and shower before going to another appointment.

[Peggy]

@Small_Change

I wonder sometimes if the “blowing in the dust” myth perpetuates itself as it absolves the barn owner or manager of any responsibility around transmission.

That was definitely the case in the experience I described. Barn owner stashed ponies that should have been in quarantine at our barn to help out the owner of the rescue who was at overflow (and to whom she’d sold the property). And then blamed dust blowing in from an area at least 10 miles east.

[Peggy]

@Scribbler

I’ve actually heard people say that recurring lymphangitis (another staph bacteria) also “lives in the soil” but since very few horses contract it, I personally think that the recurrences are about individual immune systems and health.

I’m pretty sure this was the case with the horse I lost to lymphangitis. Recurring episodes at the same time each year that escalated each time. Maybe he was allergic to something that bloomed that time of year? I always felt he had kind of a whacky immune system.

[Ghazzu]

@Scribbler

Strangles is a very old disease. In the period where we knew it was bacterial but before we had tests to understand some horses were carriers or silently infected, “it lives in the ground” would have been a plausible explanation for how you could get an outbreak seemingly out of nowhere.

The environmental persistence theory was before we learned that clinically recovered horses could be chronic shedders of S. equi.

[Scribbler]

Like thinking malaria came from “bad air” fumes from swamps, before we understood the mosquito/protozoal vector. People had the correlation with swamps and marshes right from observation, but not the actual cause.

[risuenaVT]

My friend’s got a pretty bad story with strangles (still ongoing, even), but at least she’s been able to keep it to just her horses. It helps that it’s her own private barn and most of her horses are retirees and even the ones who aren’t rarely went off property even before strangles.

In her case, she got three horses from a feedlot quarantined them in field far from the others for at least two months. And then a month after she ended quarantine, the OTTB I was leasing for her had a snotty nose and fever and the next day swollen lymph nodes. Two other horses from the original six showed symptoms but recovered quickly. None of the horses from the feedlot ever showed symptoms but over a year later - I wish I were kidding about the length of time - and the one I was leasing still has abscesses and is fighting it. He got really bad last summer - had swellings all up and down his neck and chest. I’ll just say bastard strangles is aptly named.

I haven’t been involved in his veterinary care other than giving him IM penicillin when my friend was away for the weekend last fall, so I don’t actually know all the details. I do still visit sometimes to spoil him and say hi but take a lot of precautions because I have no interest in being a vector who spreads it to any other horses or farms. As recently as Tuesday we thought he might be just about over it, because the lymph nodes in his throat are the smallest they’ve been since this all started. They’ve started growing again…

At this point, my friend doesn’t even keep him quarantined from the others anymore, so he’s been out with eight other horses for months and he’s still the only with symptoms. I’m sure one of the three from the feedlot has to be a carrier though because there’s just no other way it could have happened.