The Horse:Your Guide To Equine Health Care provides monthly equine health care information to horse owners, breeders, veterinarians, barn/farm managers, trainer/riding instructors, and others involved in the hands-on care of the horse.
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20 TheHorse.com THE HORSE September 2016 were actually some hormone changes that occurred," he says. This could be the birth canal signal to wake up. In the wake of this discovery, owners and veterinarians have tried this method to help their maladjusted foals. Madigan says it has saved many from expensive round-the-clock care, which 80% of dum- my foals typically need to survive. "We're doing a study now comparing about 100 foals that have had the squeeze treatment in the field to about 100 that were treated conventionally," he says. Madigan's group has also experimented with infusing normal foals with neuros- teroids, which resulted in altered behav- ior. When neurosteroid levels returned to normal, the foals' behavior returned to normal. "So we've determined that there's not just an association, but that these neurosteroids do alter behavior," he says. Now, back to the human tie-in. The Comparative Neurology Research Group, which Madigan is a part of, is currently studying neurosteroid levels in banked blood samples from autistic children of various ages to see if they are elevated. But this isn't the only group looking at these values in autistic children. Madigan cites peer-reviewed research results from scientists in Europe who found elevated neurosteroid levels in the saliva of some autistic children. Four of the neuros- teroids mentioned are the same ones found in maladjusted foals. Madigan is also working with research- ers from Stanford University to compare neurosteroid levels in children shortly af- ter birth to those of children who receive kangaroo mother care (when a mother keeps continuous skin-to-skin contact with her newborn baby). Madigan describes one instance he relays in all of his speeches—a newborn boy was pronounced dead in a major hospital, and the parents used kangaroo mother care and he "came alive." "We can explain that by the idea that after the baby is born, evolutionary biology is wait- ing for the mother to hold the infant," he says. "That child may have woken up be- cause (he) had such a high level of these neurosteroids that it slowed down so much in the cellular machinery that they thought the infant was dead. And then when the mother holds it, perhaps it gets the signal to lower them just like when we squeeze the foals and they wake up." Results of a yet-to-be published study of 40 infants show some differences in neurosteroid levels between those who received kangaroo mother care and those who didn't. Madigan says there is also an ongoing study at UC Davis Medical Center evaluating neurosteroids in neo- natal infants receiving critical care. "We know that you have to have some signal to transition consciousness from the in utero sedated state to the extrauterine life, which is something all mammals have in common," he says. "We are focusing our research on failure to transition to consciousness, which is a syndrome that's never been reported, and it likely occurs in foals, cattle, zoo animals, and humans." Madigan says all this research into neurosteroids could have a global impact on infant health and mortality. And his research results have already revolution- ized how people treat maladjusted foals. Connecting the Dots Comparing what we know from equine medicine with human medicine (and vice versa) can potentially save lives and prevent disease in both species. To quote Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, MD, a professor of medicine at the University of Califiornia, Los Angeles, who serves as a cardiovascular consultant to the Los Angeles Zoo: "After all, we humans are animals, too, and it's time for us physi- cians to embrace our patients' and our own animal natures and join veterinar- ians in a species-spanning approach to health. Because it turns out, some of the best and most humanistic medicine is be- ing practiced by doctors whose patients aren't human. And one of the best ways we can take care of the human patient is by paying close attention to how all the other patients on the planet live, grow, get sick, and heal." h Shared Science Dr. John Madigan developed a novel "foal squeeze" system to help maladjusted foals transition to conciousness. COURTESY JOE PROUDMAN/UC DAVIS Treatment for both humans and horses suffer- ing from asthma includes bronchodilators and nebulizers, such as the one seen here. COURTESY SHELYB MCCAMEY PHOATOGRAPHY