Saroids..?

[Jay.o]

Mysy's field mate has lumps all over his..um...sheath (?). Maybe thats not the correct term for it but, they are all over the 'sensitive bit' on a gelding :D. Up under his belly, near his hind legs.

Anyway, his owner didnt know what they were, Yo didnt know either but I suspect they are sarcoids, maybe? I have never seen one, nor had any experiance with one at all so i wouldnt really know.

They are (what looks like) sores or 'boils' that are red and look puffy. Some have decreased in size and they are scabbing over and healing. Are these sarcoids?

And, the most important question (to me), can horses catch them from each other? I wont be too happy if Mysy catches them :mad: - especially seeing that she didnt get the vet out, or get anyone knowledgeble to look and treat them.

[shandy84]

If it is sarcoids then general thinking is they can' be transmitted however, some believe flies can take the disease to the other horse to be honest there is not much known about them. If it is sarcoids and they are red and sore he should get them seen to, make sure she looks into all treatment options though.

Take a look at these links for an idea of if it could be a sarcoid bare in mind these are extreme cases I will attach a picture of shandy's so you can see how mild a version yu can get (hers is a problem because of the area it's in)

http://cleesaddlery.co.uk/informationindex/sarcoids.htm

http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/sarcoid/question1.htm

[Still Falling]

I know two horses who have sarcoids! They are tumerus and as far as i know are not contageous amongst other horses!

Although some horses live happily with sarcoids, some sarcoids become cancerus and cause many problems which is why they must be seen to asap.

A vet would either put rings round the sarcoids to cut off blood supply and make them drop off, have them frozen off or have them surgically removed!

Sarcoids often do become scabby but this usually doesn't mean they are going down or anything as sarcoids are tumerus and need seing to"

[shandy84]

They're all really cancer fly control and general hygine is suggested

You can have sarcoids treated by:
Surgery
Freezing
Chemotherapy
Immunotherapy
Creams such as the liverpool creams
radiation therapy

[Showjumper]

They sound like the sarcoids that Dolly has in the same area. I thought they were warts so didn't worry, but when they started popping and oozing, I called the vet, and they're small sarcoids :rolleyes:

[chev]

Sarcoids needn't necessarily be bad news. Lili's looked exactly like Shandy's and it vanished without treatment (after I'd bought the ruddy cream and paid for a punch biopsy and lab report :rolleyes: :mad: ) - my vet tells me this does sometimes happen.

Latest research into sarcoids and their causes show a possible connection to a virus - they often form on the site of a graze or cut, and sometimes appear on horses sharing grazing with an affected horse. However - there are no indications that they are contageous as such - so I really wouldn't worry about Mysy grazing with this gelding if he does ahve sarcoids.

The most effective treatment is DK's Liverpool creams - they're expensive (about £60 a pot, and you could need anywhere between one and three pots) but they have the highest success rate of all treatments.

To say they're all cancer is not actually accurate - they sometimes behave in a similar way but unlike cancers never invade anything other than the skin. They are only ever a problem if they interfere with tack, or are easily knocked and damaged, or extremely large or numerous. Plenty of horses have one and never develop more.

In the past sarcoids were virtually impossible to treat but now that more and more is being discovered about how they behave, what might cause them and how to treat them, they don't have the same dire implications at all.

[abi_pring]

I believe that one of our Ds has a sarcoid above his eye. It is a lump that just doesnt have any hair on it, just kind of looks like hes rubbed it. It doesnt look anything like that picture.
We are having the vet out to check them but as it is so near his eye, we are not sure if he can have it treated. Hopefully it isnt a sarcoid, or if it is, that it is not cancerous.
Hope Mysys mate isnt either.

[abi_pring]

Just found a very useful website....

http://petcaretips.net/equine_sarcoid.html

Seems like my horse has a verrucous sarcoid.

[shandy84]

I read they should all be considered as a cancer of the skin but as you say they don't spread. I would advise against surgery as the ones shandy has were made worse by it. I have also heard that a mare put into foal lost her sarcoids!!! Who would have thought.

[Jay.o]

Thank you for all that info. it was was really helpfull!

Shandy, those look like what Charlie has, kind of red and raw and then some are scabbing over and 'healing'.

I am just glad that they aren't contagious, I couldnt cope with them if they were. They look so fiery and mean :(

Her vet is out today, but not to treat them :rolleyes:, but to give a 5* vet check for her insurance. I hope she mentions them to him. But hopefully he'll see them when hes checking his legs or something. I noticed them when i was doing up his girth!

Ok, so now for another question, what causes sarcoids? How are caught?

[chev]

Shandy - Monty has a mare who's single sarcoid got smaller every time she had a foal. It's now completely vanished. I couldn't even find an indication of where it might have been.

Jay.o - unfortunately what causes them and how they are caught is one thing no-one is really certain about. Current theories include the virus theory (that might also explain why they often develop on the site of an injury, and why some horses apparently fight them off without treatment - like Lili and Monty's mare) although there doesn't seem to be any real evidence of the virus spreading from horse to horse. There's no real evidence of hereditary either - some feel a horse affected by sarcoids will pass on a tendency to develop them, but it's not a congenital disease. Others feel a horse that recovers untreated may pass on an immunity to whatever causes them. It would certainly be sensible to avoid breeding from a mare who has lots, or who has failed to respond to treatment.

In the same way that the same type of cancer can appear more aggressive in some people than in others, the same is true of sarcoids in horses. Lili's was a fibroblastic sarcoid - which in some horses spread like nothing on earth, causing huge problems and becoming ever more dangerous lesions - in Lili it simply disappeared. No idea why. Some sarcoids get nasty if they're damaged - certainly damage seems to contribute to their spreading. Again, although Lili's was biopsied and she knocked it enough to make it bleed roughly every three days or so - it did the opposite and healed up. There are also several types of sarcoid; fibroblastic, occult, verrucous and so on. Each has its own 'behaviour' and appearance - and prognosis. To further confuse it, horses also develop 'combinations' of sarcoid - where a sarcoid has characteristics of more than one type, or where one type is developing into another, which can also happen.

It would be worth googling it really since research throws up new theories and developments all the time - this is just what I remember from what I found out when Lili grew hers.

There is one thing to remeber though. About the only thing you can say for definite about sarcoids is that they are unpredictable.

[sasswood]

I was reading your entries and I thought I would share my drama with you all.

I've had my horse Traveller for 2 and a half years.
For the last year of that time I have been fighting his sarcoid on his sheath.
It statrted out small when I bought him and I didn't think any thing of it but then 3 months after I had him it started to grow. Before I started treatment on it it was about the size of one and a half grape fruits and was growing really fast. I later found out that his last owners had had it removed when he was two and that it was growing back twice as nasty as it was before because of this. so I would say do not have it surgically removed if you can.

we have been using the cream from Liverpool and so far it is working. the sarcoid has shrunk. at one point it fell of and in some parts it is not growing back. We have another apointment with our vet, who have been great about all his treatment (he's a six and a half year old cob X shire who hates injections) on the 28th of this month and hopefully this will be his last. I don't want to scare people but I have already paid the vets £1220 for his treatment so far and as I said it is not over yet.

I have heard that there are immune system supplements that you can give them to help with sarcoids does any one know of one that really works (as I can tell you a lot of stuff doesn't)

I will try to get some photos of his sarcoid and post them on here so that you can see the change in his sarcoid over the year.