ID Perspective

It provides expert commentary on equine infectious disease, including emerging and re-emerging pathogens, surveillance findings, diagnostic developments, vaccination strategy, and changes in prevention and biosecurity guidance.

Surveillance indicates which pathogens are circulating regionally and seasonally, informing vaccination timing, diagnostic suspicion, and the advice given to clients who travel or compete.

Recommendations evolve as new diagnostic methods, vaccine products, and outbreak data become available. Guidance from bodies such as the AAEP is periodically revised, and practitioners should work from current versions rather than long-held practice.

Stewardship means using antimicrobials only when indicated, selecting the narrowest effective agent, dosing correctly, limiting duration appropriately, and reserving critically important antimicrobials. It aims to preserve efficacy and slow resistance.

Attention has focused on vector-borne diseases with shifting geographic ranges, neurologic herpesvirus, novel viral causes of hepatitis and colitis, and resistant bacterial infections in hospitalized patients.

Risk advice generally covers vaccination status appropriate to the destination and event, fever monitoring before and after travel, avoiding shared equipment and water sources, minimizing nose-to-nose contact, and a plan for isolation on return if signs develop.