Saint Paul, Minnesota

The Equine Genetics and Genomics Laboratory at the University of Minnesota is conducting a study using 3,000+ horses to study the genetic mechanisms behind different muscle disorders in horses and how diet and exercise may impact these disorders. The results of this study will provide veterinarians, researchers, and horse owners with information on genetic and management factors that influence muscle disease and aid in developing treatment strategies for muscle disease in individual horses. This will be the largest study of muscle disease ever conducted in the horse. To make this unprecedented study happen, we need help from the owners of horses affected by muscle disease.

For more information about the study, FAQs, and detailed instructions about how to participate, please visit our study website .

To contribute to this important effort owners will to need to:

1) Provide information in our Muscle Disease in Horses survey for a horse on your property with suspected or diagnosed muscle disease. 

2) Provide the same information in the same survey for another horse of similar age and breed on your property without suspected or diagnosed muscle disease.

Here is the survey .

3) Upload photos, videos, blood test results with creatine kinase (CK) and aspartate transaminase (AST) values, muscle biopsy results, and genetic testing results for each horse from the survey to our secure file-receiving folder on 

Dropbox .

4) Mail in hay, grain, supplement, and hair root or blood samples for each horse from the survey to our laboratory.