Infectious Diseases in the Horse

Causes of Infectious Diseases in the Horse

• bacteria
• fungi
• protozoa

Common infectious diseases of the horse include:

• Anthrax: Anthrax is a severe and usually infectious disease, characterized by chills, great depression and stupor of the horse and a profound alteration of the blood. It is caused by the entrance into the animal's body of a bacterium, known as the Bacillus anthracis, or its spores. It is not just a horse disease; it can affect any animal, including humans.
  
  The direct cause of anthrax is always infection of a previously sound animal, either directly from a diseased animal or through various media that contain excretions or the debris from the body of one previously infected. The symptoms of anthrax usually develop with extreme rapidity. Congestion of all the organs and tissues is an eventual outcome.
  
  
• Contagious Pneumonia: Contagious pneumonia is an acute, contagious, infectious disease of horses with complications in the form of serous infiltrations of the subcutaneous tissues and tendons. Pneumonia is a specific inflammation of the lungs, accompanied with interstitial edema and inflammation of the tissues of these organs and a constitutional disturbance and fever. It causes a profound sedation of the nervous system, which may be so great as to cause death. It is sometimes attended with pleurisy, inflammation of the heart or septic complications, which also prove fatal.
  
  
• Horsepox: Horsepox is a specific, infectious disease of the horse, attended by an eruption of pustules, or pocks, over any part of the skin or on the mucous membranes lining the various cavities in the body. A large number of predisposing causes favor the development of the disease, as in the case of strangles, and this trouble, like almost all contagious diseases, renders the animal which has had one attack immune. The chief predisposing cause is youthfulness.
  
  
• Influenza: The term influenza is applied to a febrile, contagious, infectious disease of horses, which is characterized by a blood infection, with inflammation of the mucous membranes, which frequently involves the lungs. When the symptoms of influenza develop, they may be intense or so moderate as to occasion but little alarm. The disease may run a simple course as a specific fever, with alterations only of the blood, or at any period it may become complicated by local inflammatory troubles.
  
  Untreated, influenza is an infectious disease that could result in further complications, or even the death of the horse. These complications can spread to virtually every area of the horse.
  
  
• Strangles: Strangles is an infectious disease of the horse seen most frequently in young animals. It usually leaves them immune from future trouble of the same kind. It appears as a fever lasting for a few days and is usually associated with an abscess formation of lymph glands, especially those under the jaw, which have a tendency to break on the outside. It usually leaves the animal perfectly healthy and as good as it was before.
  
  The cause of this infectious disease is infection by direct contact with an animal suffering from the disease, or indirectly through contact with the discharges from an infected animal or by means of the atmosphere in which an infected animal has been. There are many predisposing causes which render some horses much more subject to contract the disease than others.

How to Deal with Infectious Diseases

• Disinfection: Disinfection is a very important phase in the control of infectious disease. This consists in the use of certain substances that possess the power to destroy bacteria or their spores, or both.
  
  
• Segregation: Isolating infected horses from healthy horses is your first step when an infectious disease is thought to be manifest in one or more horses.
  
  
• Vaccination: Vaccination against disease is key to preventing infectious diseases in horses. Talk to your vet about vaccination.

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