Sisters join forces to tackle mysterious deadly horse disease

Two horse-loving sisters from Aberdeenshire are pooling their resources to try to help find the elusive cause of a devastating horse disease after suffering its impact first hand.

Gillian Green with Jed at their stables near Oldmeldrum

Past Scottish Championship dressage winner Gillian Green’s horse Jed contracted a chronic form of the deadly but mysterious equine grass sickness (EGS), a disease which is prevalent in Aberdeenshire and estimated to kill about one in 200 horses a year in the UK.

Now her sister, local business owner Emily Anderson, has donated £4,000 to The James Hutton Institute, a national leader in soil science, to help fund work that will mean scientists can explore if the cause of disease comes from the soils and plants the horses graze on.

Gillian is doing her part as manager of the National Soils Archive at the Hutton, where she is responsible for processing the soil samples for storage and future analysis.

She said: “Equine grass sickness is a truly terrible disease. It was a horrific experience to see Jed stuck with the chronic form of EGS. He survived, thanks to a lot of support and effort from Emily, the stables and the wider community. But most don’t and it’s devastating not knowing what causes it.”

By pairing soil samples being taken from an Aberdeenshire hot spot for EGS with biological samples held in a Biobank run by the animal health researchers at the Moredun Research Institute, in Midlothian, it is hoped scientists will be able to pinpoint the cause of this debilitating disease.

Gillian added: “We hope that modern techniques like environmental DNA (eDNA) could help to finally pinpoint the cause of this nightmare disease – or in fact rule out it being related to what’s in soil.”

The cause of equine grass sickness, which damages the horses’ nervous systems resulting in partial or complete paralysis of their intestines, has been a mystery since the first recognised outbreak in an army camp near Dundee in 1907.

“Thousands of horses have died from this devastating disease in the past 100 years, including two young stallions at the late-Queen’s pony stud in Balmoral in 2018, forcing the estate to halt its breeding programme,” says Dr Beth Wells, a research scientist at Moredun leading this work.

“One theory is that the cause could be in the soil or plant life where horses graze, which is why so we’re grateful for the Hutton’s and Emily’s support,” she says.

Emily Anderson, who also owns horses, addsed: “All this work has to be funded and unless these samples are processed, they can’t be stored for future analysis and we could then still be in the dark and more horses will die, without us knowing why.”

The Grass Sickness Biobank is a three-year project, funded by the British Horse Society, that will provide a unique resource to researchers and scientists looking into EGS. It will be maintained for up to 20 years at both Moredun, where animal samples are kept, and the National Soil Archive at the Hutton, a nationally critical store containing around 60,000 samples.

To support this project, visit www.hutton.ac.uk/research/support-equine-grass-sickness-research

For further information please visit www.grasssickness.org.uk/biobank/