©1994-2018 All
Rights Reserved. Online
Journal of Veterinary Research. You may not store these pages in any
form except for your own personal use. All other usage or distribution is
illegal under international copyright treaties. Permission to
use any of these pages in any other way besides the before mentioned must be
gained in writing from the publisher. This article is exclusively
copyrighted in its entirety to OJVR publications. This article may be copied
once but may not be, reproduced or re-transmitted without the express
permission of the editors.
OJVRTM
Online Journal of Veterinary
Research©
Volume 22
(3):247-252, 2018.
Clinical signs and pathology in 24 horses poisoned by zinc phosphide.
Moaddab H¹, Siavosh Haghighi ZM²*, Tavanaeimanesh H.³
1-Department
of clinical Sciences, 2- Basic Sciences
and Pathobiology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Razi
University, Kermanshah, 3- Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of
Veterinary Medicine, University of Tehran, Iran *Corresponding author mailing address: Minoosh.Siavosh@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Moaddab H,
Siavosh ZM, Tavanaeimanesh
H., Clinical signs and pathology in 24 horses poisoned by zinc phosphide, Onl J Vet Res., 22 (3):247-252,
2018. Zinc phosphide is a grey
crystalline powder used as a rodenticide. Under wet or acidic conditions zinc
phosphide degrades into phosphine gas. We describe clinical findings and
pathology in 24 horses during 4 outbreaks of Zinc Phosphide poisoning over a
period of 16 years. All horses exhibited profuse sweating, 18 had convulsions,
13 showed colic and 21 were recumbent. All horses had tachycardia, tremor,
pyrexia, whereas 22 had tachypnea, 19 suffered from weakness, 14 showed ataxia and 15 with altered mentation. Blood
tests revealed 17 horses were hypoglycemic, 19 had elevated gamma glutamyl
transferase, aspartate transaminase (21), alkaline phosphatase (22), creatinine (13) and 16, increased blood
urea nitrogen (BUN). Postmortem changes included widespread petechia,
ecchymoses and vascular congestion, hepatic lipidosis, pulmonary edema and necrosis in cerebral cortex.
In this study, treatment with activated charcoal mixed with magnesium hydroxide
or sodium bicarbonate, fluid therapy or phenobarbital were ineffective and all horses eventually died.
According to this survey the prognosis of horses poisoned with zinc phosphide
is poor.
Key words: Horse,
zinc phosphide, rodenticide poisoning.
FULL-TEXT (SUBSCRIPTION OR PURCHASE ARTICLE)