A two-year participatory intervention project with owners to reduce lameness and limb abnormalities in working horses in Jaipur, India

Participatory methods are increasingly used in international human development, but scientific evaluation of their efficacy versus a control group is rare. Working horses support families in impoverished communities. Lameness and limb abnormalities are highly prevalent in these animals and a cause for welfare concern. We aimed to stimulate and evaluate improvements in lameness and limb abnormalities in horses whose owners took part in a 2-year participatory intervention project to reduce lameness (PI) versus a control group (C) in Jaipur, India.In total, 439 owners of 862 horses participated in the study. PI group owners from 21 communities were encouraged to meet regularly to discuss management and work practices influencing lameness and poor welfare and to track their own progress in improving these. Lameness examinations (41 parameters) were conducted at the start of the study (Baseline), and after 1 year and 2 years. Results were compared with control horses from a further 21 communities outside the intervention. Of the 149 horses assessed on all three occasions, PI horses showed significantly (P<0.05) greater improvement than C horses in 20 parameters, most notably overall lameness score, measures of sole pain and range of movement on limb flexion. Control horses showed slight but significantly greater improvements in four parameters, including frog quality in fore and hindlimbs.This participatory intervention succeeded in improving lameness and some limb abnormalities in working horses, by encouraging changes in management and work practices which were feasible within owners’ socioeconomic and environmental constraints. Demonstration of the potentially sustainable improvements achieved here should encourage further development of participatory intervention approaches to benefit humans and animals in other contexts

Significant differences in lameness and limb-related abnormalities between Baseline and Final examinations of 149 working horses belonging to 131 owners from Jaipur, India.

<p>(Participatory intervention group n = 83 horses belonging to 73 people; Control group n = 66 horses belonging to 58 people). The group with the largest relative improvement between Baseline and Final has the text depicting the magnitude of change in bold.</p><p>¹ See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0124342#pone.0124342.t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a> for scoring methods</p><p>² For continuous or ordinal data = mean of horses (for whole horse measures) or limbs (for limb-specific measures) affected. For binary measures or those aggregated into two groups for analysis = percentage of horses/ limbs affected</p><p>³ Relative improvement: the group which showed the most positive clinical change and/or the least negative clinical change (except for 'Shod' and 'Active response when approached' where no clinical value was applied)</p><p>⁴ Calculated as Year 1—Year 3, i.e. a positive value = clinical improvement; a negative value = deterioration (except for 'Shod' and 'Active response when approached' where no clinical value was applied)</p><p>⁵ 1st-order MQL estimation (otherwise, less-biased 2nd-order PQL estimation was employed in all binary and multinomial response models)</p><p>Significant differences in lameness and limb-related abnormalities between Baseline and Final examinations of 149 working horses belonging to 131 owners from Jaipur, India.</p

Components of individual exit interviews with horse owners in participatory intervention (PI) and control (C) groups at the end of the 2-year project.

<p>¹ Semi-structured interview questions were addressed directly to each horse owner and referred to the 2-year project period only. In some cases the owner was absent and the interview was carried out with a relative.</p><p>² Each card stated a single equine resource or management need taken from the monitoring chart used in group meetings, as shown in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0126160#pone.0126160.t002" target="_blank">Table 2</a>. Some cards referred to management or work practices which were only relevant to some horses, for example cart maintenance, feeding during pregnancy. These were omitted from the card-sorting exercise for individual owners if not relevant.</p><p>Components of individual exit interviews with horse owners in participatory intervention (PI) and control (C) groups at the end of the 2-year project.</p

Evaluation of Changes in Equine Care and Limb-Related Abnormalities in Working Horses in Jaipur, India, as Part of a Two Year Participatory Intervention Study

<div><p>Background</p><p>Previous studies have found the prevalence of lameness in working horses to be 90–100%. Risk factors for lameness in this important equine population, together with risk-reduction strategies adopted by their owners, are poorly understood. The objective was to uncover risk factors for lameness and limb abnormalities in working horses, by associating clinical lameness examination findings on three occasions over two years with owner reported changes in equine management and work practices over this period.</p><p>Methodology/Principal Findings</p><p>Twenty-one communities of horse owners in Jaipur, India, took part in a participatory intervention (PI) project aiming to reduce risk factors for poor welfare, particularly lameness and limb problems. Associations between quantitative measures of equine lameness/limb abnormalities and reported changes in management and work practices were compared with 21 control (C) communities of owners where no intervention had taken place. Key findings from ‘complete cases’, where the same horse stayed with the same owner for the whole study period (PI group = 73 owners of 83 horses, C group = 58 owners of 66 horses), were that more positive statements of change in equine management and work practices were made by PI group owners than C group owners. A mixed picture of potential risk factors emerged: some reported management improvements, for example reducing the weight of the load for cart animals, were associated with improved limbs and lameness, and others, such as making improvements in shoeing and increasing the age at which their animals started work, with negative outcomes.</p><p>Conclusions/Significance</p><p>This study illustrates the complexity and interacting nature of risk factors for lameness in working horses, and highlights the importance of longitudinal investigations that recognise and address this. PI group owners found the project useful and requested similar inputs in future. Our findings demonstrate the value of exploratory and participatory research methodology in the field of working horse welfare.</p></div

2,6-Diaminopurine as a highly potent corrector of UGA nonsense mutations

International audienceNonsense mutations cause about 10% of genetic disease cases, and no treatments are available. Nonsense mutations can be corrected by molecules with nonsense mutation readthrough activity. An extract of the mushroom Lepista inversa has recently shown high-efficiency correction of UGA and UAA nonsense mutations. One active constituent of this extract is 2,6-diaminopurine (DAP). In Calu-6 cancer cells, in which TP53 gene has a UGA nonsense mutation, DAP treatment increases p53 level. It also decreases the growth of tumors arising from Calu-6 cells injected into immunodeficient nude mice. DAP acts by interfering with the activity of a tRNA-specific 2'-O-methyltransferase (FTSJ1) responsible for cytosine 34 modification in tRNATrp. Low-toxicity and high-efficiency UGA nonsense mutation correction make DAP a good candidate for the development of treatments for genetic diseases caused by nonsense mutations

Optimized approach for the identification of highly efficient correctors of nonsense mutations in human diseases

About 10% of patients with a genetic disease carry a nonsense mutation causing their pathology. A strategy for correcting nonsense mutations is premature termination codon (PTC) readthrough, i.e. incorporation of an amino acid at the PTC position during translation. PTC-readthrough-activating molecules appear as promising therapeutic tools for these patients. Unfortunately, the molecules shown to induce PTC readthrough show low efficacy, probably because the mRNAs carrying a nonsense mutation are scarce, as they are also substrates of the quality control mechanism called nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD). The screening systems previously developed to identify readthrough-promoting molecules used cDNA constructs encoding mRNAs immune to NMD. As the molecules identified were not selected for the ability to correct nonsense mutations on NMD-prone PTC-mRNAs, they could be unsuitable for the context of nonsense-mutation-linked human pathologies. Here, a screening system based on an NMD-prone mRNA is described. It should be suitable for identifying molecules capable of efficiently rescuing the expression of human genes harboring a nonsense mutation. This system should favor the discovery of candidate drugs for treating genetic diseases caused by nonsense mutations. One hit selected with this screening system is presented and validated on cells from three cystic fibrosis patients