This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: There is no "one-fix-for-all" solution for sarcoids, said Sophie Bogers, an assistant professor of large animal surgery. Many require chemotherapy or invasive surgery.
But she wants a better solution. Elsewhere on the Virginia Tech campus, in biomedical engineer Eli Vlaisavljevich's lab, a colleague has what may be that better solution: a technology called histotripsy that uses focused ultrasound to produce a bubble cloud that can break down tumor tissue. A team of engineers and veterinarians is working together to develop a wearable device that would allow histotripsy to be performed safely on horses.
This spring, their system got its first real test on a horse named Pea, a 9-year-old Hanoverian mare with a tumor on her belly. "She was really good about it," said Bogers, who led Pea's treatment. "She just stood there, was very happy.
She didn't seem to feel or dislike the histotripsy." Pea's case was the first live test in a Virginia–Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine clinical trial examining whether this sound-wave technology could treat sarcoids, the most common and hardest-to-beat skin tumor in horses. Researchers don't yet know whether histotripsy can reliably keep a sarcoid from coming back, but they do know that at least one horse can tolerate the treatment while standing and awake, with no apparent ill effects. Sarcoids are the most common skin tumor in horses and are notoriously hard to eliminate.
When one keeps recurring, especially in a spot like an eyelid or a girth line, owners can cycle through procedures, wound care and expenses for months or years with no resolution. "In some cases for large sarcoids, people find the management of the sarcoid becomes too much, and they elect euthanasia," Bogers said. Sarcoids form when bovine papillomavirus meets a horse's own genetic susceptibility.
"Fibroblastic sarcoid is basically a fleshy mass that horses get on their skin," Bogers said. The worst look like big red blobs. Left alone, they ulcerate, bleed and attract flies.
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