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  Discussion on Glucose level of horses
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vickiann

Posted on Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 - 8:53 pm:

With all of our recent discussions about glucose problems, I thought the following article may be of interest:

Sweet! Veterinary Glucometers Accurate for Horses and Foals
by: Stacey Oke, DVM, MSc
March 20 2010, Article # 16011
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Veterinary glucometers provide accurate and precise blood glucose measurements in healthy and sick horses and foals, reported a Colorado State University research team led by Eileen Hackett, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVS, Dipl. ACVECC.

Hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia, and glucose variability are major problems in emergency medicine and are associated with morbidity and mortality.

"Accurate methods of glucose determination are important to provide veterinarians with a means to recognize hyper- and hypoglycemia in horses and foals," explained Hackett.

In their recent study, the veterinary glucometer AlphaTRAK (manufactured by Abbott Animal Health) accurately measured blood glucose concentrations in horse and foals compared to the traditional chemistry analyzer.

"Of the 100 horse and neonatal foal samples analyzed, 97% of the glucometer values obtained in our study would have resulted appropriate clinical decisions," Hackett said.

Glucometers are beneficial because they:

Allow immediate point-of-care, patient-side clinical decision making;
Permit frequent monitoring;
Decrease costs and time required for analysis of glucose levels compared to traditional methods;
Require little blood, and
Are easy to use.
Since veterinary glucometers had not yet been evaluated in clinical trials, Hackett and colleagues compared glucose measurements from a veterinary glucometer to a standard reference plasma chemistry analyzer.

The study authors advised that equine hospitals should follow manufacturer's instructions to obtain consistent and comparable results to clinical laboratory blood glucose measurements.

The study, "Evaluation of a veterinary glucometer for use in horses," was supported by Abbott Animal Health and is scheduled to be published in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine. The abstract is available online.
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