Chronic Uterine Degeneration: When to Retire?

Introduction and aetiology
The glandular branches in normal endometrial tissue are not normally surrounded by stromal collagen. It is however in several papers anticipated that the stromal cells in the lamina propria can produce collagen in response to stimuli or injury such as trauma and infection (Kenney 1978; Schoon et al. 1997; Hoffman et al.2009). It has been described that chronic degeneration and fibrosis of the uterine tissue is more associated with age and pathological status of the uterine tissue than with parity (Held and Rohrbach 1992). The relationship between the degree of uterine degeneration and the ability of a mare to carry a foal to term have been described by several authors (Kenney and Doig 1986; Ricketts and Alonso 1991; Ricketts and Barrelet 1997) as well as the relationship between early fetal death and pathology of the endometrium (Darenius 1992). The full mechanism of chronic uterine degeneration or endometrosis, as it is named in recent literature, however is still not fully understood and needs to be investigated further. [...]