EIA has been compared to AIDS

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

The equine viral disease stirring up local emotions has been compared to the human viral disease AIDS because of many similarities, Beltrami County Extension educator Clark Montgomery says.

Both diseases have similar symptoms; both can appear in its host causing it to become violently ill leading eventually to death or not affect its host at all; and there are no cures for either disease, only preventions. However, the horse disease poses no threat to humans.

Equine infectious anemia spreads by attacking and reproducing in a horse's blood cells, according to information from the American Association of Equine Practitioners. In response, the horse's immune system destroys the infected red blood cells, producing a lowered blood count that causes anemia. Because the horse's immune system is impaired, the horse becomes susceptible to secondary infections, such as pneumonia, often dying as a result.

In general, EIA appears in three forms in equines -- the "acute" form, in which the virus active, multiplying and harming the immune system and other organs; the "chronic" form, in which the animal may vacillate between remission and disease states; and the "unapparent" form, in which the horse carries the virus but shows no apparent symptoms.

The disease is transmitted by blood, most commonly by blood-sucking insects -- such as horse flies, deer flies and mosquitoes. The virus is carried in the residual blood on an insect's mouthparts as it travels from one host to the next. When it bites its next host, it transmits the disease. However, humans can also transmit the disease by not sterilizing needles between uses between horses.

Being there is no cure for the disease and no vaccine to prevent it, the only protection is preventative measures, which includes testing horses for the disease. In the end, there are only two choices, both difficult, for a owner of an EIA-infected horse -- euthanizing it or quarantining it for life. Minnesota law requires that the owner of positively tested horse must do one or the other. The State Board of Animal Health recommends killing it.

EIA was discovered around the turn of the century, and is also known as "Swamp Fever," because most incidents originate in geographically wet areas. The biggest concentration of cases can be found along the Mississippi River states, Montgomery said.

According to the AAEP information, only 2,000 new cases of EIA are identified in the U.S. each year -- less than 1 percent of the entire U.S. horse population. Yet the threat to the entire horse population remains, much like the threat of AIDS to humans.

Minnesota ranked ninth in the nation in 1993 in the largest number of reactors, or horses testing positive for EIA. However, the numbers can be deceiving because only about one-fifth of 1 percent of the horses tested were found positive.

Fifty-tree EIA-infected horses were found in Minnesota during fiscal 1996, according to Dr. Keith Friendshuh, executive assistant of the state Board of Animal Health. This is a third of 1 percent of the horses tested, which is about the the average number found each year.

The number of reactors found in the state has increased recently, partly because the Board of Animal Health started using a new system of identifying infected horses in September 1995 that leads to higher numbers, said Friendshuh. Prior to that, when a reactor was found it was either quarantined or killed. That counted only as one animal in statistics.

However, since September 1995, the board traces a reactor's history, testing any other horse the reactor could have contacted, raising the number of reactors found.

Friendshuh said he believes the recent outbreaks are more representative of the new testing procedure than of an increase in the disease.

"Are we finding more of EIA ... yes," he said. "Is there more of it around? No, I don't think there's more than before. We're just tracing it better."