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Epidemiology of musculoskeletal injuries in a population of harness Standardbred racehorses in training

BACKGROUND: There is a substantial paucity of studies concerning musculoskeletal injuries in harness Standardbred racehorses. Specifically, little is known about the epidemiology of exercise-related musculoskeletal injuries. Most studies on this subject involve Thoroughbred racehorses, whose biomech...

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Autores principales: Bertuglia, Andrea, Bullone, Michela, Rossotto, Federica, Gasparini, Mauro
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3922780/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24410888
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1746-6148-10-11
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author Bertuglia, Andrea
Bullone, Michela
Rossotto, Federica
Gasparini, Mauro
author_facet Bertuglia, Andrea
Bullone, Michela
Rossotto, Federica
Gasparini, Mauro
author_sort Bertuglia, Andrea
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: There is a substantial paucity of studies concerning musculoskeletal injuries in harness Standardbred racehorses. Specifically, little is known about the epidemiology of exercise-related musculoskeletal injuries. Most studies on this subject involve Thoroughbred racehorses, whose biomechanics and racing speed differ from Standardbred, making comparisons difficult. Here, a population of Standardbred racehorses trained at the same racecourse was studied over four years and a classification system for exercise-related musculoskeletal injuries was designed. The incidence rates of musculoskeletal injuries causing horses’ withdrawal from training for 15 days or longer were investigated. A mixed-effects Poisson regression model was used to estimate musculoskeletal injury rates and to describe significance of selected risk factors for exercise-related injuries in this population. RESULTS: A total of 356 trotter racehorses from 10 different stables contributed 8961 months at risk of musculoskeletal injuries. Four-hundred-and-twenty-nine injuries were reported and classified into 16 categories, based on their aetiology and anatomical localisation. The overall exercise-related injury rate was 4.79 per 100 horse months. When considering risk factors one by one in separate univariable analyses, we obtained the following results: rates did not differ significantly between genders and classes of age, whereas one driver seemed to cause fewer injuries than the others. Racing speed and racing intensity, as well as recent medical history, seemed to be significant risk factors (p < 0.001), while being shod or unshod during racing was not. On the other hand, when pooling several risk factors in a multivariable approach, only racing intensity turned out to be significant (p < 0.001), since racing speed and the racing intensity were partially confounded, being strongly correlated to one another. CONCLUSION: Characterizing epidemiology of exercise-related musculoskeletal injuries in trotter racehorses provides baseline incidence rate values. Incidence rates of stress fracture are lower in Standardbreds compared to Thoroughbreds, whereas the opposite is true for tendon and suspensory ligament injuries. In addition to identification of risk factors for musculoskeletal injuries among Standardbred racehorses, results suggest that racing intensity seems to be a protective predictor of risk and recent medical history could be used to identify horses at risk of injury.
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spelling pubmed-39227802014-02-13 Epidemiology of musculoskeletal injuries in a population of harness Standardbred racehorses in training Bertuglia, Andrea Bullone, Michela Rossotto, Federica Gasparini, Mauro BMC Vet Res Research Article BACKGROUND: There is a substantial paucity of studies concerning musculoskeletal injuries in harness Standardbred racehorses. Specifically, little is known about the epidemiology of exercise-related musculoskeletal injuries. Most studies on this subject involve Thoroughbred racehorses, whose biomechanics and racing speed differ from Standardbred, making comparisons difficult. Here, a population of Standardbred racehorses trained at the same racecourse was studied over four years and a classification system for exercise-related musculoskeletal injuries was designed. The incidence rates of musculoskeletal injuries causing horses’ withdrawal from training for 15 days or longer were investigated. A mixed-effects Poisson regression model was used to estimate musculoskeletal injury rates and to describe significance of selected risk factors for exercise-related injuries in this population. RESULTS: A total of 356 trotter racehorses from 10 different stables contributed 8961 months at risk of musculoskeletal injuries. Four-hundred-and-twenty-nine injuries were reported and classified into 16 categories, based on their aetiology and anatomical localisation. The overall exercise-related injury rate was 4.79 per 100 horse months. When considering risk factors one by one in separate univariable analyses, we obtained the following results: rates did not differ significantly between genders and classes of age, whereas one driver seemed to cause fewer injuries than the others. Racing speed and racing intensity, as well as recent medical history, seemed to be significant risk factors (p < 0.001), while being shod or unshod during racing was not. On the other hand, when pooling several risk factors in a multivariable approach, only racing intensity turned out to be significant (p < 0.001), since racing speed and the racing intensity were partially confounded, being strongly correlated to one another. CONCLUSION: Characterizing epidemiology of exercise-related musculoskeletal injuries in trotter racehorses provides baseline incidence rate values. Incidence rates of stress fracture are lower in Standardbreds compared to Thoroughbreds, whereas the opposite is true for tendon and suspensory ligament injuries. In addition to identification of risk factors for musculoskeletal injuries among Standardbred racehorses, results suggest that racing intensity seems to be a protective predictor of risk and recent medical history could be used to identify horses at risk of injury. BioMed Central 2014-01-10 /pmc/articles/PMC3922780/ /pubmed/24410888 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1746-6148-10-11 Text en Copyright © 2014 Bertuglia et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Bertuglia, Andrea
Bullone, Michela
Rossotto, Federica
Gasparini, Mauro
Epidemiology of musculoskeletal injuries in a population of harness Standardbred racehorses in training
title Epidemiology of musculoskeletal injuries in a population of harness Standardbred racehorses in training
title_full Epidemiology of musculoskeletal injuries in a population of harness Standardbred racehorses in training
title_fullStr Epidemiology of musculoskeletal injuries in a population of harness Standardbred racehorses in training
title_full_unstemmed Epidemiology of musculoskeletal injuries in a population of harness Standardbred racehorses in training
title_short Epidemiology of musculoskeletal injuries in a population of harness Standardbred racehorses in training
title_sort epidemiology of musculoskeletal injuries in a population of harness standardbred racehorses in training
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3922780/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24410888
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1746-6148-10-11
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