Lipids in Equine Airway Inflammation: An Overview of Current Knowledge.
Authors: Mönki Jenni, Mykkänen Anna
Journal: Animals : an open access journal from MDPI
Summary
Equine asthma, encompassing both mild-moderate and severe forms, remains a significant health concern across multiple breeds and disciplines, yet conventional diagnostic approaches such as bronchoalveolar lavage fluid cytology provide only a partial view of the inflammatory landscape in the lower airways. This review examines lipidomics—the systematic analysis of lipid molecules and their metabolic products—as an emerging tool for understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying airway inflammation in horses, particularly the proinflammatory and proresolving lipid mediators that drive disease pathology. The authors synthesise recent lipidomic research to demonstrate how fatty acid profiling, lipid mediator analysis, and comprehensive lipidomic approaches can reveal inflammatory signatures that conventional cytological methods may overlook, offering mechanistic insights into the differences between mild-moderate and severe asthma phenotypes. Adoption of lipidomic techniques in equine practice and research could fundamentally improve disease characterisation, enabling more targeted therapeutic interventions based on individual inflammatory profiles rather than relying solely on cell count data. For practitioners managing horses with airway disease, understanding the lipid-mediated inflammatory cascade provides a rational foundation for evaluating emerging treatments and recognising that a single clinical presentation may encompass diverse underlying inflammatory mechanisms.
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Practical Takeaways
- •Current diagnostic tools like bronchoalveolar lavage fluid cytology have limitations in fully representing inflammatory status in lower airways; emerging lipidomic approaches may provide more comprehensive assessment
- •Lipidomic profiling of fatty acids and lipid mediators could help differentiate between mild-moderate and severe asthma phenotypes, potentially improving diagnosis and treatment targeting
- •Understanding lipid-based inflammatory mechanisms may eventually lead to novel therapeutic strategies targeting proinflammatory or proresolving lipid mediators in equine airway disease
Key Findings
- •Lipidomics offers unexplored potential for investigating cellular mechanisms and inflammatory mediators in equine airways beyond traditional bronchoalveolar lavage fluid cytology
- •Many crucial proinflammatory and proresolving mediators in airway inflammation are lipids, making lipidomic analysis particularly relevant to equine asthma research
- •Current understanding of detailed pathophysiology and differences between MEA and SEA remains incomplete despite extensive research