Equine metabolic syndrome: Etiopathogenesis, diagnostics and therapy

Equine metabolic syndrome (EMS) is a term adopted in 2002 in aim to define the complex pathology involving obesity, insulin resistance and laminitis in horses and ponies. The EMS was terminologically derived upon similar condition in humans. The metabolic disturbance in equines is developed sequentially to the primary chronic overfeeding, i.e. intake of surplus food to individual needs combined with insufficient activity of animal. The syndrome has been reported more frequently in ponies than in other breeds although genetic background of EMS has not been confirmed. The characteristic symptoms include regional collection of adipose tissue under the skin often distributed regionally i.e. in crest (neck from pool to withers), behind the shoulders, at the dock of the tail and in prepuce in males or in the udder in mares; as well as impaired locomotion and/or lameness in all four limbs and cycling disturbance in mares