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Record W4415012706 · doi:10.1186/s12917-025-05032-z

Morphometric changes in overweight horses following 10-week weight loss programs

2025· article· en· W4415012706 on OpenAlexafffund
Anna Garland, D.A. van Doorn, Robin van den Boom, Ellen Roelfsema, Madeline Boast, Samara Wafelbakker, Persephone McCrae, Wendy Pearson

Bibliographic record

VenueBMC Veterinary Research · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldVeterinary
TopicVeterinary Equine Medical Research
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Guelph
FundersNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaOntario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs
KeywordsWeight lossOverweightObesityBody weightAdipose tissue

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

BACKGROUND: Up to 70% of horses in domestic equine populations are overweight. Promotion of weight loss is an important component of limiting the detrimental co-morbidities associated with excess adipose tissue. The use of a body condition score (BCS) can help equine caregivers track their horse's weight-status. However, this single score doesn't reflect changes in individual adipose depots. The purpose of this study was to characterize morphometric changes (including 8 anatomic BCS measurements that make up the whole-BCS) in horses during 3 different weight-loss programs over 10 weeks. METHODS: Thirty-two horses were randomly assigned to one of three weight loss groups [exercise (E; fed to 100% digestible energy (DE) requirements, exercise 5x/week), feed restriction (FR; fed to 85% DE requirements, no exercise), or feed restriction and exercise (FRE; 85% DE, exercise 5x/week)], or a weight-maintained control (C; 100% DE, no exercise)] for 10 weeks. Horses were fed individualized diets formulated to meet their nutritional requirements. Outcome measures were recorded at weeks 1, 5 and 10, and included 11 morphometric measurements [body weight (BW) via weight tape, cresty neck score (CNS), and 8 individual BCSs (neck, shoulder, leg, withers, ribs, back, haunches, and tailhead) and a whole-BCS)]. Data were analyzed using a 2-Way RM ANOVA with respect to treatment group and week. RESULTS: All 4 groups (including controls) had a significant reduction in BW and whole BCS. At week 10 whole BCS was lower in FRE than controls. All groups had a reduction in back, haunches, leg and shoulder; FR, FRE and E horses had reductions in rib BCS; E and FRE horses had reductions in tailhead BCS and CNS. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, all weight loss strategies produced significant weight loss, but only those strategies which included exercise reduced fat deposits known to be implicated in metabolic dysregulation in obese horses. Future studies should explore the optimum exercise load (duration and intensity) to facilitate loss of fat from these areas.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.001
Threshold uncertainty score0.005

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.326
GPT teacher head0.478
Teacher spread0.152 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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