Method for Preventing Neonatal Septicemia, the Leading Cause of Death in the Neonatal Foal

Robert N. Oglesby DVM and excerpts from John E. Madigan DVM address to the AAEP.

Summary

This article takes excerpts from Dr. Madigan's address to the veterinarians at the 1997 American Association of Equine Practitioners. It represents some new thoughts on prevenitive care for the newborn:

Septicemia remains the leading cause of death in neonatal foals. The open gut is considered the likely mechanism for bacterial exposure. Methods that allow early gut closure may be as important or more important than serum IgG in preventing neonatal bacterial infection. "Open gut" refers to the phenomena of increased permeability of the bowel during the first 12 to 24 hours of life that allow the foal to absorb the immunoglobulins out of the colostrum.~Ed.)

Introduction

After operating the neonatal intensive care unit at the University of California for over 10 years, I have observed a large number of septic foals. As with field studies 1 of causes of illness and death in foals less than 7 days of age, the leading cause of illness upon admission in our neonatal unit is bacterial infection (septicemia that is predominantly due to gram-negative organisms). This is despite a number of studies indicating that passive transfer failure and low serum IgG are the cause of most of these neonatal deaths 2–5 and subsequent efforts to raise IgG levels in newborn foals. However, I now do not believe that low IgG is the cause of this problem, nor have our efforts to raise IgG by various means seemed to have made a great deal of difference in the incidence of septicemia over the past 10 years based on presentation of cases to our hospital.

For years field veterinarians have been indicating that good management is more important than absolute amounts of IgG. The purpose of this paper is to define what components of good management result in a lower incidence of infections, even with low IgG in foals on some farms. This paper discusses the early research on the immunology of the newborn and observations from field epidemiologic studies and colostrum deprivation studies as they related to the route of infection and a method for the prevention of septicemia.