- Oral presentation
- Open access
- Published:
Plasma insulin concentration is affected by body condition in Icelandic horses
Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica volume 57, Article number: O1 (2015)
Introduction
Little is known about the variation in plasma insulin levels in Icelandic horses and factors that influence it.
Objectives
The aim was to describe the variation in plasma insulin levels in a group of healthy Icelandic horses showed at a breed evaluation field test (evaluation of gaits under rider and conformation) and to document possible relationships between insulin levels and sex, age, body weight, height, body condition score (BCS) and management such as subjective level of fitness, travel time and daily forage and concentrate allowance.
Methods
Data from 201 horses were collected (4-11 years). Body condition score was assessed using a 5-degree scale. A venous blood sample was taken before the gait test. Plasma insulin were analysed in duplicates by ELISA and between samples variation was <10%. ANOVA (mixed model) was used (effects considered significant at p<0.05).
Results
Plasma insulin levels ranged from 0.01 to 0.60 µg/L. Concentrate allowance and BCS had a significant effect on the plasma insulin level. BCS ranged from 2.3 to 4.0 (approximately 4 to 7 on a 9-degree scale) and concentrate allowance from 0 to 4 kg. For one degree of increase in BCS, log-insulin increased with 0.45 µg/L and for every kilo of increase in the concentrate allowance, log-insulin increased with 0.26 µg/L.
Conclusion
In Icelandic horses considered to be fit for a breed evaluation field test, plasma insulin levels increased not only due to increased concentrate intake as could be expected, but also to a considerable extent due to an increase in BCS.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Open Access  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
About this article
Cite this article
Jansson, A., Stefansdottir, G., Torres, J.C.R. et al. Plasma insulin concentration is affected by body condition in Icelandic horses. Acta Vet Scand 57 (Suppl 1), O1 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/1751-0147-57-S1-O1
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1751-0147-57-S1-O1