Cutaneous Markers of Disorders Affecting Young Horses

Abstract

In neonatal foals and young horses, both hereditary and acquired diseases can have skin lesions as the primary owner complaint. Cutaneous markers of disorders of young horses include coat color patterns (eg, lethal white foal syndrome and deafness syndrome in Paint horses or lavender foal syndrome in Arabian horses) as well as specific skin lesions (eg, skin sloughing due to junctional epidermolysis bullosa) that should alert equine practitioners and dermatologists alike to underlying disease processes. Diseases with skin manifestations range from those in which the skin is the primary organ affected (eg, skin that is easily stretched with hereditary equine regional dermal asthenia) to those for which dermatological lesions are secondary and resolve with treatment of the underlying disease (eg, syndrome of suspected immune-mediated ulcerative dermatitis). This review is primarily focused on disorders that are either hereditary or affect young horses in the first few weeks to years of life.