A research poster from the School of Settled Matters finds that complement activation in retired draught horses' fetlocks tracks their years in harness, while their hocks stay close to baseline.
A research poster from the School of Settled Matters compares complement activation in two joints of 31 horses at one agistment property
The School of Settled Matters has built its research agenda around the long record: what a history leaves behind, and where it can still be read. Its latest research poster finds one such record inside the joints of working animals.
What the Joint Keeps, led by Associate Professor Anselm Threlkeld with Dr Vigdis Emenike of the School of Underlying Conditions and Dr Clemency Tredinnick, follows 31 retired draught horses at a single agistment property. Across the herd, activation of the complement system in the fetlock rose with each horse’s years in harness, while the hock held close to where it began.
A joint is a very patient witness. The School has spent a good deal of time learning how to listen to witnesses of that kind, and it has been a pleasure to find that the habit travels well beyond the courtroom.
— Associate Professor Anselm Threlkeld, School of Settled Matters
The work brings together routine veterinary examination, owner-held working histories and a joint-by-joint laboratory reading to offer a layered, horse-level account of how a working life settles into the body. In doing so it extends the University’s cross-school investment in records that outlast the people who kept them.
Dr Emenike thanked the owners “who brought out the old work diaries and let us read them alongside their horses”, and said the property had been generous with its time across every examination day.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.v2sghw.