Succeed® Equine Fecal Blood TestTM (FBT) is a simple test, which can be performed in the field, which provides veterinarians with reliable and objective data to support the differential diagnosis of diseases of the horse’s gastrointestinal tract. The FBT test detects the presence of albumin and haemoglobin in the stool, as markers of pathologies affecting the proximal stomach / duodenum, the distal intestine (downstream of the common bile duct) or both.
The importance of albumin and haemoglobin. Since albumin and haemoglobin pass through the gastrointestinal tract in different ways, they are valuable markers for the differentiation of pathologies affecting the proximal stomach / duodenum or distal intestine. Haemoglobin transits intact through the entire digestive tract and is present only in whole blood. The presence of haemoglobin in faeces indicates, therefore, a lesion with active bleeding (lesions of grade 2 or higher according to the 0-4 EGUC scale – Equine Gastric Ulcer Council) in any point of the gastrointestinal tract. On the contrary, albumin is digested by gastric acids and enzymes from the proximal duodenum and can also be released in the case of lesions with serous exudate, but without active bleeding (for example, lesions with compromised basement membrane of the gastrointestinal tract).
Consequently, the presence of albumin in faeces indicates pathologies affecting the distal intestine (index of minor damage – lesions of grade 1 or higher according to the 0-4 EGUC scale) and a possible compromise of the basement membrane proximal gastrointestinal tract.
The evaluation of these two markers provides an indication of the conditions of the gastrointestinal tract, as well as their relative severity and general localization.