Giving horses the BEST protection from strangles

The Strangles Awareness Week campaign will be taking to social media once again in the first week of May and encouraging owners to take positive, practical steps to protect horses from the most common equine nfectious disease.

With 268 lab-diagnosed cases recorded by the Surveillance of Equine Strangles scheme (2024) and many more cases going unrecorded, strangles remains a threat to any equine, regardless of their value, use or lifestyle. Resulting from infection with Streptococcus equi bacteria, strangles can cause real distress and potentially lifehreatening complications to infected horses (Figure 1). It usually also involves considerable anxiety, disruption and expense to those affected by an outbreak, often for weeks or even months.

However, research suggests that many yards still take few, if any, precautions to reduce their strangles risk (Crew et al, 2023). Unlike the agricultural sector, where stringent biosecurity is part of daily routines, much of the equine population remains exposed to an unnecessarily high infectious disease risk. Many people affected by an outbreak say they simply did not think strangles would happen to them, indicating why engagement with biosecurity practices remains below a level that could reduce case numbers across the UK. Poor biosecurity does not only contribute to the continued spread of strangles; it also opens the door for other infectious diseases, including equine flu and equine herpes virus. In addition, there is a growing threat from exotic diseases such as West Nile virus, as they spread, facilitated by climate change and an internationally mobile equine population.