Colitis – maximising diagnostic success

Colitis represents one of the most challenging disorders encountered by equine practitioners, both in determining the cause and in therapeutically managing the case. The detection of equine gastrointestinal pathogens using conventional microbiological tests can be very challenging because these pathogens are either difficult or impossible to grow, or can be present in pathogenic or nonpathogenic forms, making interpretation of positive results difficult. The introduction of molecular assays for the detection of common enteric pathogens has in recent years markedly improved the diagnostic success rate in colitis cases. However, the use of faecal material for molecular diagnostics has been associated with false negative results due to the presence of inhibitory substances (salts, proteases) in the faeces that can interfere with nucleic acid extraction or amplification ...