Strangles in horses is caused by the bacterium Streptococcus equi<\/em>.\u00a0The infection is highly contagious and is transmitted by objects that an infected horse comes in contact with, e.g. the water buckets and by persons handling an infected horse.\u00a0Usually, all horses in a stable will be infected if they are not immune to the disease from having had the disease recently or due to residual maternal antibodies.\u00a0The disease lasts typically for a month and affected horses need to be isolated for an extensive time.\u00a0Horses can be carriers for a very long time, even after the symptoms have disappeared.<\/p>\n Globally, the number of cases of strangles in horses is rising. Sweden reports about 100 outbreaks annually and the UK about 1000. One case affects not only a single horse as several horses usually are quarantained.\u00a0In Sweden, strangles is a notifiable disease to the Agriculture Department.<\/p>\n This means that the financial ramifications of strangles in horses are usually severe.\u00a0An affected breeder, stable or riding school may have to close for decontamination and horses are forced into quarantine and banned from attending events.<\/p>\n The infection begins with the bacteria binding to the surface of the tonsils and subsequently spreading into the lymphatic system.\u00a0Symptoms begin with fever and after another few days swelling of the submandibular lymph nodes.\u00a0The horse has difficulty eating and drinking and, needless to say, suffers badly from this.\u00a0The lymph nodes finally burst and bacteria are released into the upper airways with purulent nasal discharge as a result. If untreated, as the lymph nodes burst the skin ruptures and bacteria are released into the open, contaminating the floor, bedding, proximate objects, etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What is strangles? Strangles in horses is caused by the bacterium Streptococcus equi.\u00a0The infection is highly contagious and is transmitted by objects that an infected horse comes in contact with, e.g. the water buckets and by persons handling an infected horse.\u00a0Usually, all horses in a stable will be infected if they are not immune to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":756,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intervacc.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intervacc.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intervacc.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intervacc.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intervacc.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/intervacc.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":516077,"href":"https:\/\/intervacc.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/758\/revisions\/516077"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intervacc.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intervacc.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Global increase of strangles in horses<\/h2>\n