Research Study: Inflammation in the Hocks of Horses

Summary: Healthy racehorses in active training, as well as human athletes, experience constant musculoskeletal stress and trauma that affect their performance. In this study we evaluated the effectiveness of a mechanical stochastic resonance (SR) device in treating inflammation and muscle injury in standardbred racehorses. Although inflammation is often a part of the body’s natural response to tissue injury which can initiate a healing process, inflammation is frequently painful, can impede healing, and often leads to hypersensitivity to mechanical stimuli, which is difficult to treat clinically. The Infratonic device generates a low frequency mechanical noise, or SR, able to treat this condition without pain. We measured the temperature on the hocks of 10 horses in active training by infrared thermography before and after Infratonic treatment. The results show that Infratonic therapy is able to decrease the temperature in the treated hocks, indicating a reduction in inflammation. Moreover, this result correlates with our finding of a decrease in the amount of serum enzymes, markers of muscle damage, aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and creatine phosphokinase (CPK). We demonstrate that Infratonic therapy is effective in reducing inflammation and muscle damage in standard bred racehorses and suggest that it might be also effective in human athletes.