School of Biosciences and Veterinary Medicine, University of Camerino, Matelica, Italy.
Department of Translational and Precision Medicine, Sapienza, University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
PLoS One. 2024 Oct 7;19(10):e0311697. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0311697. eCollection 2024.
Many horses exhibit stereotypies, especially when living in human controlled environments that may prevent horses from satisfying natural needs in terms of feeding, drinking, moving, and socializing. In human medicine, obsessive compulsive disorder and other severe psychiatric disturbances are associated with stereotypic behaviors; salivary biomarkers evaluation is considered a reliable tool for diagnosis of common mental health disorders because saliva collection easy to obtain and noninvasive. In this study, we hypothesized that salivary cortisol concentrations, in addition to alpha-amylase (sAA) and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) activities, are considered stress biomarkers that may be influenced in horses trained for racing competition with stereotypic behaviors. Saliva at rest condition was obtained from ten non-stereotypic Thoroughbreds horses involved in high-level competition; eleven Thoroughbreds high-level competition horses showing stereotypic behaviors, and five Thoroughbreds leisure non-competition horses. Cortisol was found to be higher in high-level competition non-stereotypic horses and sAA was significantly higher in non-stereotypic leisure horses when compared to horses involved in competition, while BChE did not change between groups. These results may represent the basis for further behavioural evaluation to elucidate how stereotypic horses and horses involved in competition overcome stressful situations.
许多马表现出刻板行为，尤其是当它们生活在人类控制的环境中时，这些环境可能会阻止马满足进食、饮水、移动和社交等自然需求。在人类医学中，强迫症和其他严重的精神障碍与刻板行为有关；唾液生物标志物评估被认为是诊断常见精神健康障碍的可靠工具，因为唾液采集容易且无创。在这项研究中，我们假设唾液皮质醇浓度以及α-淀粉酶（sAA）和丁酰胆碱酯酶（BChE）活性被认为是应激生物标志物，可能会受到具有刻板行为的赛马训练的影响。在休息状态下从十匹参与高水平比赛的非刻板的纯血马中获得唾液；十一匹表现出刻板行为的纯血马参加高水平比赛，五匹纯血马休闲非比赛。与参与比赛的马相比，高水平比赛中非刻板的马的皮质醇水平较高，而非刻板的休闲马的 sAA 显著较高，而 BChE 在组间没有变化。这些结果可能为进一步的行为评估提供基础，以阐明刻板的马和参与比赛的马如何克服压力情况。
