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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Claire WelshORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
A retrospective cohort study of important musculoskeletal conditions of Thoroughbred racehorses was conducted using health records generated over a 15. year period (n=5062, 1296 sires). The prevalence of each condition in the study population was: fracture, 13%; osteoarthritis, 10%; suspensory ligament injury, 10%; and tendon injury, 19%. Linear and logistic sire and animal regression models were built to describe the binary occurrence of these musculoskeletal conditions, and to evaluate the significance of possible environmental risk factors. The heritability of each condition was estimated using residual maximum likelihood (REML). Bivariate mixed models were used to generate estimates of genetic correlations between each pair of conditions.Heritability estimates of fracture, osteoarthritis, suspensory ligament and tendon injury were small to moderate (range: 0.01-0.20). Fracture was found to be positively genetically correlated with both osteoarthritis and suspensory ligament injury. These results suggest that there is a significant genetic component involved in the risk of the studied conditions. Due to positive genetic correlations, a reduction in prevalence of one of the correlated conditions may effect a reduction in risk of the other condition. © 2013 The Authors.
Author(s): Welsh CE, Lewis TW, Blott SC, Mellor DJ, Lam KH, Stewart BD, Parkin TDH
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Veterinary Journal
Year: 2013
Volume: 198
Issue: 3
Pages: 611-615
Print publication date: 01/12/2013
Online publication date: 05/06/2013
Date deposited: 17/10/2019
ISSN (print): 1090-0233
ISSN (electronic): 1532-2971
Publisher: Elsevier Ltd
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tvjl.2013.05.002
DOI: 10.1016/j.tvjl.2013.05.002
PubMed id: 23746478
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