A binding tale.

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Effective drug therapy sought for post-operative problem. An article by Kristy Nudds.

A horse’s health is easily threatened when it has gastrointestinal (GI) disturbances such as diarrhea and displacement. Sometimes, these conditions signal the presence of potentially fatal bowel lesions, and the horse requires abdominal surgery to correct the problem. But such surgery can have a deadly post-operative complication — an impairment in GI motility called ileus. (GI motility refers to the progression of food, fluids and waste through the digestive tract.)

Treating ileus is difficult in horses because there’s still no perfect way to increase intes-tinal motility, says Prof. Nathalie Cot?, Clinical Studies, who is working to solve the problem. Along with graduate students Judith Koenig and Caesar Dearo, she is studying the effectiveness of an antibiotic and its derivative for treating post-operative equine ileus. The challenge, Cot? says, is to find a pro-kinetic drug, used to induce gut motility, that stimulates all sections of the GI tract. She’s interested in the commonly used antibiotic erythromycin, which prompts motility in other species by binding to receptors of the hormone motilin.

“First, we had to determine that erythro-mycin would bind to the motilin receptors in horses,” she says. “Now that we know they do, we have to see if they’re effective at stimulat-ing GI motility.” Erythromycin does pose a health concern, however, because exposure to antibiotics can disturb the gut’s natural bacteria flora. To avoid antibiotic side effects, the researchers are also testing an erythromycin derivative. It contains the chemical structure of eryth-romycin needed for binding to motilin receptors, but should not exert the same antibiotic properties, Cot? says.

Next, the researchers will compare the bacterial counts in horse feces for erythro-mycin, and they’ll measure the time it takes for fecal matter to move through the GI tract when either one is administered. “We need to continue our investigation into erythromycin to determine if its effect in equine is similar to other species,” says Cot?.

This research was sponsored by the E.P. Taylor Equine Fund. Erythromycin derivative was supplied by Chugai Pharmaceutical of Japan.