Osteoarthritis (OA) is an important cause of pain, disability and economic loss in humans, and is similarly important in the horse. Recent knowledge on post-traumatic OA has suggested opportunities for early intervention, but it is difficult to identify the appropriate time of these interventions. The horse provides two useful mechanisms to answer these questions: 1) extensive experience with clinical OA in horses; and 2) use of a consistently predictable model of OA that can help study early pathobiological events, define targets for therapeutic intervention and then test these putative therapies. This paper summarises the syndromes of clinical OA in horses including pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment, and details controlled studies of various treatment options using an equine model of clinical OA.

Six synovial fluid and serum biomarkers were useful in separating early experimental OA from exercise alone but synovial fluid CTX1 and serum Col CEQ and CTX1 were not.

Results of this controlled study indicated that there was significant clinical and histologic improvement in osteoarthritis-affected joints of horses following treatment with ACS, compared with placebo treatment. On the basis of these findings, further controlled clinical trials to assess this treatment are warranted, and investigation of the mechanisms of action of ACS should be pursued concurrently.

The proposed system for assessment of equine articular tissues provides a useful method to quantify OA change. It is believed that addition of quantitative tracing onto plastic and macroscopic measurement as recently described would be an improvement for overall assessment of articular cartilage change.

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