Inflammatory Biomarkers: A Horse s Early Warning System? By Natalie Voss

Transcription

1 March 15, 2016 SPECIAL Inflammatory Biomarkers: A Horse s Early Warning System? By Natalie Voss Veterinarians have long been searching for some sort of advance warning that a horse may be on the brink of suffering a serious bone or soft tissue injury. Recent research into biomarkers may provide practitioners with more tools to anticipate problems or a better understanding of a horse s discomfort after it has begun. According to a definition established by a working group of researchers in 2011, a biomarker is a measurable characteristic that s indicative of a normal biological process, a response to drugs, or a response to a pathogen. Biomarkers may be found in blood or urine. Some biomarkers have a unique composition that demonstrates which part of the body they come from, such a specific organ. Others can signal the presence of inflammation but do not reveal its location. Dr. Agnieszka Turlo, doctoral student at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, said veterinarians are already finding ways that biomarkers can help them diagnose a patient in the field. In particular, Serum Amyloid A (SAA), a protein released to the blood from the liver in the early phase of inflammation, has taught practitioners a lot about organ-based inflammation. For this reason, some researchers wondered whether SAA could also provide information about athletic injuries. A study released in October in the open-access journal Plos One presented data from researchers at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences that suggests that it can. The authors were curious whether biomarkers would appear differently in the blood based on the source tissue of a horse s injury, so they tested blood from 56 Thoroughbreds 28 with injuries, 28 without. Their work found that SAA was elevated for four days after injury in horses with soft tissue damage, but healthy horses and those with bone-related stress injuries did not experience this change. The significance behind the work is limited because of the study s small size, cautioned Turlo, who was one of the study s co-authors. It s still too early to know whether SAA will prove adequately specific in diagnosis of inflammation to avoid costly procedures like MRIs or bone scans. Nonspecific biomarkers (those that don t clearly identify their source) are also trickier to pin down because they could be circulating due to something as serious as a festering ligament strain or something as simple as a recent vaccination. More research is needed before biomarkers can be considered a reliable diagnostic tool. Continued on Page 5 SPECIAL INCENTIVES FOR FLORIDA BREEDERS IN Call today to learn how we can benefit your breeding program. Mark Toothaker David Tillson Brian Lyle ASK RAY Des Dempsey QUESTION: Do horses have to breeze fast to bring top dollar at a 2-year-old sale? ANSWER: Absolutely not. Look at 2015 OBS April graduate Get Jets. The Scat Daddy colt breezed in 11 flat for Cary Frommer, was bought for $300,000 by Tony Dutrow, won first out at Saratoga and won a stakes at 2. The Breeders Farm spendthriftfarm.com

2 Page 2 Like his sire Harlan s Holiday, G1 winner Into Mischief is becoming a favorite sire at the sales of 2-year-olds in training, and at the Ocala Breeders Sales March auction this week, Into Mischief is holding a hot hand with his current crop of juveniles. The raw numbers tell a tale of strong demand. The stallion stands for $45,000 live foal at Spendthrift Farm in Lexington, Ky., in the strongest stallion market in the world. At Spendthrift, Into Mischief covered more than 200 mares in 2015, and several of his most progressive yearlings sold at auction for eight to 10 times the price of the seasons that they were bred on. At this week s OBS March sale, the demand for the horse is matched by the strength of his juveniles breeze performances and by the volume of opportunity for buyers to find one. There are 19 2-year-olds by the stallion consigned to this auction, and demand for them is going to be strong. On the first breeze day alone, three of them worked in :09 4/5, with two more breezing in :10 flat. Even allowing that on Day 1, 14 breezed in :09 4/5 under ideal Florida training conditions, no other stallion had more than one performer come down the lane that quick. Speed and relatively early maturity are common traits among the offspring by Into Mischief, they are traits that are well-suited to the American racing program, and buyers love the combination. Stallion Spotlight Into Mischief By Frank Mitchell Into Mischief OBS June sale of 2-year-olds, earned more than $3 million, and is now a stallion at Spendthrift alongside Into Mischief. Among those likely to be carefully inspected at the March sale by agents and owners will be Hip 179, a bay colt out of the A.P. Indy mare Poco Mas from the Niall Brennan consignment. This colt is a half-brother to G2 winner Carinosa (Tiznow), and their second dam is stakes winner Adel (Strawberry Road), who produced two stakes winners, including G1 winner Interpol (English Channel). There is a good mixture of dirt track performance and turf course success among the relatives of Hip 179, and that colt breezed a furlong in :10 1/5 over OBS s synthetic surface. Likewise, Hip 126 is a bay filly out of Miss Veronica (Distorted Humor) from the Wavertree Stables consignment. The filly breezed a furlong in :09 4/5, and her dam is a daughter of Pocahontas Stakes winner Birr (Farma Way). The achievements of Into Mischief emphasize the loss of his sire Harlan s Holiday, one of the breed s consistent sources of speed and quality. With 10 crops and 1,085 foals, Harlan s Holiday made a mark on the breed, not just with Into Mischief and other major performers, but with their successes at stud and the potential for more benefits to come. Further, Into Mischief has proven that his stock are naturally speedy and precocious, and from the stallion s first crop, the multiple G1 winner Goldencents came out of the The final North American crop by Harlan s Holiday are 2-year-olds and under training now. Among them are 14 consigned to the OBS March sale. PRS Savings everywhere you look! Call us at

3 Page 3 Honor Roll NY-Bred Moanin Takes His Star Quality Overseas By Scott Jagow six of them, with the only blemish being a thirdplace finish in a G3 stakes. In his last start Feb. 21 at Toyko Racecourse, Moanin set a track record of 1:34 for the mile in the G1 February Stakes. He defeated 15 rivals and was the only horse in the race not bred in Japan. Moanin s dam never raced; like Moanin, her first foal Cosmo Zig has also spent his career thus far in Japan, producing a pair of allowance victories Chestnut colt, Henny Hughes - Giggly, by Distorted Humor. Consigned by Hidden Brook farm to the 2013 Fasig-Tipton New York Bred Yearling Sale, purchased by Bradley Thoroughbreds for $ Consigned by Eddie Woods to the 2014 OBS March Sale of Selected 2-Year-Olds in Training, purchased by Narvick international, agent, for $335,000. The February Stakes has been used by Japan s top dirt horses as prep for the Dubai World Cup, but Moanin is not expected to make the trip. He ll likely continue racing in Japan, but Bradley hopes perhaps American fans might get to see the 4-year-old at some point down the road. Could he be a Breeders Cup Mile horse? That s an interesting question, he said. PRS When bloodstock agent Pete Bradley and consignor Eddie Woods saw Moanin at the 2013 FasigTipton sale of New York-bred yearlings, they didn t say a word to each other. They just exchanged glances and nodded in agreement. Sometimes you just see a horse and think they have star quality, and he was one of those horses, said Bradley. He had size, scope and presence to him. A nod was all that was needed to be said. FEATURED YEARLING SESSION Bradley and Woods scooped up the son of Henny Hughes for $90,000, and Woods got the colt ready for resale. Pinhooking him for a significant profit at the next OBS March sale proved easy. In addition to a one-furlong work in :10 flat, Moanin was the top New York-bred juvenile at the sale, and buyers were all over the colt. Beautiful, beautiful horse who just continued to develop and go the right way, said Woods. And he s done nothing but good ever since. There s no disputing that, not that racing fans in this country have gotten a chance to see Moanin. The colt bred by Empire Equines and foaled at Vinery New York was sold to Yukio Baba, a Thoroughbred owner in Japan, and that s where Moanin has made all seven of his career starts. He s won MIXED SALE HORSES OF ALL AGES OCTOBER 9, 2016 Reasonable Rates Great Facility Entry Deadline Aug. 25th, info@heritageplace.com Serving the Equine Industry for 38 Years! 2829 South MacArthur Blvd., Oklahoma City OK

4 Page 4 TEXAS TWO-YEAR-OLDS IN TRAINING AND HORSES OF RACING AGE SALE Monday, april 4 12 noon Under Tack Show on SaTUrday, april 2 11 am lone STar park at Grand prairie About For advertising inquiries please call Emily at Ray Paulick - Publisher ray@paulickreport.com Emily Alberti - Director of Advertising emily@paulickreport.com Scott Jagow - Editor-in-Chief scott@paulickreport.com Mary Schweitzer - News Editor mary@paulickreport.com Natalie Voss - Features Editor natalie@paulickreport.com Chelsea Hackbarth - Asst Editor chelsea@paulickreport.com Esther Marr - Custom Publishing Editor Frank Mitchell - Contributing Writer COPYRIGHT 2016, BLENHEIM PUBLISHING LLC All sale grads are eligible for the new TEXAS THOROUGHBRED FUTURITY to be run this year at Lone Star Park with two divisions with estimated purses of $100,000 each. Sale catalogues are available and auction will be broadcast live online at For more information or to request a printed catalogue, contact Tim Boyce at or the Texas Thoroughbred Association at

5 Page 5 Continued from Page 1 One area in which biomarker measurement could be helpful, however, is injury prediction. The University of California-Davis has established that most fatal bone fractures in racehorses (85 percent) occur in areas with preexisting stress pathology. Scientists believe that soft tissue injuries also take place as the result of chronic stress and long-term failure of the tissue, rather than as sudden and seemingly random events. Due to its increasing popularity in equine practice, it is important to recognize as many conditions leading to the increase in blood SAA as possible, especially in cases when no obvious clinical signs of disease or injury are present, said Turlo. In such cases, increased SAA may suggest that the horse should not be pushed in training and that close monitoring of its health and fitness is needed. Dr. David Horohov, equine immunology researcher at the Gluck Equine Research Center in Lexington, Ky., has been working to draw a connection between biomarkers in racehorses and injury risk. Although he is encouraged by his results so far, Horohov said it s challenging to establish an association between the two; injuries are, statistically speaking, uncommon occurrences, which means scientists need to study large populations of horses in order to see a few injuries, and they need a large number of injuries to draw conclusions. In his most recent study, trainers of horses with high amounts of inflammatory biomarkers reduced the horses workload after learning their test results, and the horses did not experience injury which was great news for the horses, but tricky for the researchers, as it prevented them from seeing how the horses might have fared without intervention. Because we don t have that data to say for certain, I tend to emphasize more that this is a method that we use to ensure that your horse is training within its capabilities, said Horohov. As long as it doesn t produce inflammatory mediators in response to the exercise you re giving it, you re staying within its capabilities. The next step for Horohov and his team is measuring biomarker levels in horses suffering soft tissue injuries during races, and comparing those with horses who are pulled up or vanned off, but found not to have serious soft tissue injuries. He suspects that horses with elevated biomarker levels at the time of injury may have come into their races with elevated levels, but it s too early to say for sure. In the meantime, work by Horohov s laboratory is making headlines. A trio of students at the University of Kentucky Julia Fabiani, Stefanie Pagano, and Ben Martin have created a business plan to market the testing process used in the laboratory to look for biomarkers. The project, titled Race Assured, was originally an academic assignment that won a number of student business competitions, but Horohov said it s drawn real-world interest from both Central Kentucky veterinarians and international experts willing to participate in the project. It s somewhat gratifying that there s as much interest as there is, he said. They re not talking necessarily with people who have an interest in racing, but with people who can identify with the need for early diagnostics. PRS EUROPEAN-BRED GRADED WINNERS IN 2016 ALREADY INCLUDE... PRIZE EXHIBIT (GB) T: James Cassidy, O: DP Racing LLC FLAMBOYANT (FR) T: Patrick Gallagher, O: D. Bienstock & C. Winner OLORDA (GER) T: Chad Brown, O: Martin Schwartz SANDIVA (IRE) T: Todd Pletcher, O: Al Shaqab Racing BACIAMI PICCOLA (GB) T: Brian Lynch, O: Amerman Racing Stables Congratulations to everyone involved! The connections of Flamboyant, a dual Gr.2 winner at Santa Anita in 2016 Follow us on info@destinationeuroperacing.com THE LATEST NEWS AT YOUR FINGER TIPS PAULICK REPORT SPECIAL BE SURE TO LOOK FOR OUR NEXT ISSUE DISTRIBUTED MARCH 16 AT OBS FOR ADVERTISING INFO PLEASE CONTACT EMILY AT: CELL EMILY@PAULICKREPORT.COM

6 Page 6 Five to Watch A look at some of the sale s top hips By Frank Mitchell Hip 9 (Bay colt by Smart Strike x Heatherdoesntbluff, by Old Trieste): By one of Mr. Prospector s last top sons, Smart Strike, this colt is a half-brother to Grade 1 stakes winner Killer Graces (by Congaree) and to current graded stakes winner Chocolate Ride (Candy Ride). Second dam is a G3 winner who produced two stakes winners. Hip 40 (Bay filly by Uncle Mo x Jessica s Halo, by Jolie s Halo): This filly by Uncle Mo, an unbeaten juvenile champion and the leading freshman sire of 2015, is a half-sister to G1 winner Jessica is Back (Put it Back). Sire is currently leading his contemporaries on the second-season sire list and is very popular with buyers. Hip 55 (Chestnut filly by Mission Impazible x Kettle s Sister, by More Than Ready): By first-season sire Mission Impazible (Unbridled s Song), this filly is a New York-bred half-sister to G3 Sam Davis Stakes winner Vinceremos (Pioneerof the Nile) from the same sire line. Second dam is a half-sister to champion Safely Kept. Hip 136 (Bay colt by Lemon Drop Kid x Motokiks, by Storm Cat): A really quick colt by a sire best known for getting two-turn performers, this juvenile is out of a mare who fills the page with her stakes produce. Colt is a half-brother to graded stakes winners Diversy Harbor (Curlin), Keertana (Johar), and Snow Top Mountain (Najran), all three being G1-placed. Hip 145 (Bay filly by Into Mischief x Narrate, by Medagalia d Oro): By G1 winner Into Mischief, one of the best sources of early speed and development, this filly is the first foal of her dam, who won two races and earned $122,684. The dam is a halfsister to three stakes winners, including G2 Bonnie Miss winner Jill Robin L (Precocity) and Caren (Society s Chairman), winner of five races from six starts last year, including the Princess Elizabeth Stakes at Woodbine. PRS