Kester News Hour Hot Topics: Melanoma, EHV-1, and Lyme Disease
Source: EquiManagement, January 2025
One of the most well-attended sessions at each year’s American Association of Equine Practitioners’ Convention is the Kester News Hour. During this event, a panel of veterinary experts presents the equine reproduction, medicine, and orthopedic studies from the past year that they found most important and impactful. This year’s panelists included Carrie Finno, DVM, PhD, DACVIM, of the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine; Kyla Ortved, BSc, DVM, PhD, DACVS, of the University of Pennsylvania; Maria Schnobrich, VMD, DACT, of Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital; and Katie Seabaugh, DVM, DACVS, DACVSMR, of Colorado State University’s Equine Orthopaedic Research Center.
Here are three standout papers from the Medicine portion of the News Hour.
The Graying Gene’s Effect on Melanoma Incidence
Finno presented a paper investigating the speed of graying and melanoma incidence in gray horses—an equine population predisposed to this type of skin tumor. The researchers’ goal was to determine the role that copy number variations for the graying gene plays in the speed of graying and melanoma risk. They found that horses with only two copies of this gene will gray slowly and have a lower incidence of melanoma, while horses with three gene copies gray faster and have a higher melanoma risk. A horse with two copies of the graying gene bred to another with two copies is likely to produce a desirable dapple gray offspring.