The SUCCEED® Equine Fecal Blood Test™ is new and improved and now shipping! We’ve done extensive research and testing to create the best test kit available. It is highly accurate and sensitive and can help differentiate gastric from colonic ulceration related digestive tract abnormalities.

The SUCCEED® FBT™ allows you to conduct a simple, cost effective test stall-side in minutes. The test allows for a quick objective measure of foregut and hindgut lesions and related conditions without having to rely on other subjective testing. SUCCEED® FBT™ requires very little equipment – a fecal sample and about 3 ounces of clean tap water are the only things you need aside from the test kit provisions. Since the results are fast, simple, and extremely easy to read, it’s rather ideal to test more than one horse at a time with your vet.

Available exclusively through veterinary professionals, the new SUCCEED®  FBT™ kit is more effective than ever and is sure to provide a clearer look into the health of your horse’s digestive tract. Click here to read about our extensive research.

For further information about this product, visit the SUCCEED Equine Fecal Blood Test Site.

Following a year of modification and testing, the SUCCEED® Equine Fecal Blood Test™ (FBT) is being re-introduced at the 2011 AAEP Convention in San Antonio. The advanced diagnostic tool for equine digestive health conditions, including gastric and colonic ulcers, is scheduled to commence shipping in early December, 2011. The product is sold exclusively through veterinarians.

The SUCCEED FBT is a two-part lateral flow immunoassay. Taken together, results from the two parts of the FBT can provide veterinarians with a clearer view of digestive tract pathologies, and can help localize their source. This makes the SUCCEED FBT a strongly differential diagnostic aid. Read the rest of this entry »

Click to download the full paper.

A review of the research and development behind the SUCCEED® Equine Fecal Blood Test™

 Overview

Over the course of seven years, we have observed a high rate of gastric and colonic ulcers in over 900 horses at abattoirs in Texas and Canada. Throughout, we have tested several technologies that attempt to detect these lesions using a fecal sample. We now report on an improved antibody test kit that is highly accurate and sensitive and can help to differentiate gastric from colonic ulceration. The kit is a two-part field test that is easy to employ and provides results in minutes. The test may also have some other important applications.

Horses may have lesions throughout their digestive tract, and those in the colon are not well understood. Most veterinarians are familiar with Equine Gastric Ulcer Syndrome (EGUS) which manifests primarily as lesions in the distal esophagus, the squamous area of the stomach and the proximal duodenum.1, 2, 3 There are several possible causes of gastric bleeding, including ulcers, parasitism, infection and surgery. These problems, and the subsequent loss of blood, can adversely affect digestive health, resulting in pain, discomfort and impaired performance. Untreated, these issues can lead to anemia, colic and even death.4

Gastric ulcers can be visualized with a three-meter endoscope. However, the gastric area that is home to EGUS represents less than 10% of the equine GI tract. Equine digestion is dominated by hindgut action, but ulcers there are much harder to observe. Colonoscopies are impractical due to the difficulty of evacuating the equine colon without endangering the health of the horse. As a consequence, most equine vets are not familiar with colonic ulcers. However, it is now known that colonic ulcers are common in horses. The ability to accurately diagnose colonic ulcers and differentiate them from stomach ulceration is of particular importance since the treatment protocols are quite different. At the very least, treatments targeting stomach ulcers are likely to have little or no effect on conditions in the hindgut.

Over the years we have developed several technologies to detect and hopefully differentiate gastric and colonic ulcers. This article describes the basic methodology and the results to date.

Download the The Development of a Fecal Antibody Test PDF to read the full paper.

The following video will provide a visual step-by-step guide on how to administer and read the SUCCEED® Equine Fecal Blood Test™.

1. Collect a fresh (less than 4 hours old) fecal sample from the subject horse, loosely dropping fecal matter into the provided plastic container up to the Sample Fill Line.
2. Add clean tap water (potable, room temperature), filling to the Water Fill Line on the container.
3. Replace lid on container and shake thoroughly to ensure complete mixing.
4. Use the provided pipette to collect some of the fecal/water mixture from the container, avoiding particles.
5. Apply two drops of solution to each of the two sample wells on the test cassette.
6. Test results should appear within 15 minutes.

Images in this video slideshow were taken in October 2011 during reliability testing for the SUCCEED® Equine Fecal Blood Test™. They show a variety of equine GI tract conditions, from gastric and colonic ulcers to large strongyles and lipomas.

Franklin L. Pellegrini, DVM and Peter Bedding, PhD

Modern equine practice has substantially changed the way horses eat. But are we doing the right thing? In this article, we will look at how horses in the wild eat, and then take a look at how we treat them today. As you will see, we may not be doing all the right things, and this may adversely affect the very performance we are striving to enhance.

From the Horse’s Mouth

Horses have evolved over the millennia to graze continuously while strolling sedately across grasslands. Although capable of great bursts of energy, unless they are being hunted by a predator, they don’t overexert themselves. As they chew, their slightly alkaline saliva helps to buffer the acidity in their stomach. Don’t underestimate the importance of this saliva – horses can produce up to ten gallons of it every day.

It takes a lot of grass to fuel an animal the size of a horse. The impressive bulk of that grass (around twenty pounds a day) mixes with the saliva and gastric juices to create a buffered, fibrous soup in their stomach.

The bottom portion of the horse’s stomach is composed of glandular tissue which constantly produces a protective mucus layer. The top half of the stomach is not as well shielded. Nevertheless, as long as the stomach contents are buffered by saliva and fiber – and the stomach doesn’t get jostled too much – the horse stays comfortable and healthy. Read the rest of this entry »

by Emma Hardy, PhD
published in December 2009/January 2010 issue of Horse Health magazine

Equine Colonic Ulcer

NO matter how healthy your horse looks on the outside, if it is in training and regularly competing, research suggests that it is likely to be suffering from ulcers. Indeed, prevalence of gastric ulcers has been reported in as much as 97 per cent of racehorses, 50 to 60 per cent of dressage horses, show-jumpers and hunters, and even in as many as 37 per cent of leisure horses.

Aetiology, diagnosis and therapeutic strategies for gastric ulcers have become well established in recent years; however the prevalence and impact of hindgut ulceration has been frequently overlooked and is largely misunderstood.

Colonic ulceration manifests in several ways, ranging from adverse changes in temperament and performance, to loss of weight, condition and appetite, bouts of colic and subclinical anaemia. Furthermore, hindgut discomfort may even be expressed as a reluctance of the horse to extend, collect or flex through the body. These symptoms can all be attributed to the discomfort and inefficient digestion and absorption which accompany colonic ulcers. Read the rest of this entry »

by Franklin L. Pellegrini, DVM

Overview

Although Equine Gastric Ulcer Syndrome (EGUS) has been extensively studied over the last few years,    very little is known about colonic ulcers. Partly this is due to the difficulty of doing colonoscopies on horses, whose lives are actually endangered by the lengthy evacuation necessary to prepare for a colonoscopy. Nevertheless, due to a high prevalence of subclinical anemia  and the extraordinary fact that colic is the number one killer of horses, it behooves us to learn more about both gastric and colonic ulcers with an eye to prevention and remediation.

The goal of this study was to determine the incidence of gastric and especially colonic ulcers in horses. To that end, a large-scale necroscopic examination of the colons of 545 horses was conducted. A high incidence of colonic ulcers was discovered, up to 63% in some cohorts. Read the rest of this entry »

By Scott Carter, PhD and Franklin L. Pellegrini, DVM

Overview

The equine digestive tract can suffer from a variety of injuries that can result in internal blood loss such as parasitism, bacterial infection, and gastric and colonic ulcers. The presence of these injuries can compromise overall digestive health and function, and could relate to larger issues such as internal pain, feed refusal, colic and death. Of these injuries, gastric ulcers are perhaps the best studied in the horse due to the use of endoscopy techniques for direct observation of gastric lesions. The ability to detect and identify the source of blood loss throughout the equine digestive tract would, therefore, be of value in understanding the horse’s health beyond gastric ulceration.

Other than direct observation via endoscopy, few techniques exist to diagnose the presence of digestive tract bleeding. While staining techniques using guaiac acid have been used, the sensitivity of this test is poor and specificity is potentially low and prone to interference. The use of equine blood-specific antibodies would offer a higher degree of specificity and sensitivity, but those technologies have not been developed at present.

The purpose of this experiment is to use ELISA techniques to test the specificity and sensitivity of newly developed antibody technologies specific for components unique to equine blood as a foundation for readily detecting digestive tract bleeding in horses. After verifying sensitivity, these antibodies were then used in a “real world” situation to detect the presence of fecal blood 24 hours after blood was introduced to the stomach of a horse. Read the rest of this entry »