Short Communication Prevalence and clinical features of exertional rhabdomyolysis in Andalusian horses

SPECIFIC forms of exertional rhabdomyolysis (ER) are common within specific breeds. Polysaccharide storage myopathy (PSSM), a disorder of muscle glycogen metabolism (Valberg and others 1992), is common in Quarter Horses but not Thoroughbreds (McCue and others 2006) or Standardbreds (Isgren and others 2010), whereas recurrent ER, an inherited defect in sarcoplasmic calcium regulation (Lentz and others 1999), is reported to occur in Thoroughbreds but not Quarter Horses (Valberg and others 1999). As recurrent ER is managed in practice without a defini-tive diagnosis, it seems more appropriate to assign it to an idio-pathic category of ER (Stanley and others 2009). Few reports of exertional myopathies have been conducted in Andalusian horses (Quiroz-Rothe and others 2002). The objective of this study was to compare the within-breed prevalence, age and sex distributions, clinical signs and serum muscle enzyme profiles a