Liver Disease and Failure in Horses
  by Robert N. Oglesby DVM

Many of the symptoms of liver failure including loss of appetite (inappetence), weight loss, and depression, are nonspecific for a particular disease. To further complicate the diagnosis of liver failure, you often find elevated liver enzymes in routine equine blood panels on apparently healthy horses. Relatively small insults to the liver, stress, and many drugs can result in increases in serum levels of liver enzymes, sometimes dramatic rises. The reason for the rarity of liver failure is because:

• The liver has a large reserve capacity and signs of liver failure does not occur until over 70% of the liver is dysfunctional.
• The liver has a large capacity for regeneration when it is damaged as long as anti-metabolite chemicals and/or scarring are not present.

It is important to remember elevated liver enzymes do not mean liver disease and liver disease does not always equal liver failure. In order to confirm liver failure frequently requires further laboratory work up looking for the toxic metabolites that accumulate with liver failure. Causes of liver failure include poisons, infection, immune disorders, intestinal disease, and cancer. Because many of the symptoms are the same regardless of cause diagnosis of the specific cause may require biopsy though not aways. This article deals with the symptoms, diagnosis, causes, treatment and prognosis of liver disease in general in horses. Links are provided to articles on specific liver diseases where present.

You have just read the introduction to one of our nearly 800 articles on horse care, diseases, and training. It includes a description of the contents of the unabridged version. As a guest you can access this article two different ways: either purchase the article or become a member and take advantage of all the benefits Horseadvice.com has to offer. Check out our Membership Drive Discount below but hurry. This is for a limited time!