Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 17, 2026

Instrumentation of Near-term Fetal Sheep for Multivariate Chronic Non-anesthetized Recordings
Published on: October 25, 2015
Plasma iron concentrations and systemic inflammatory response syndrome in neonatal foals
Júlia Sanmartí1,2, Lara Armengou1,2, Judit Viu1,3
1Servei de Medicina Interna Equina, Departament de Medicina i Cirurgia Animals, Facultat de Veterinària, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Background:
Sparse information regarding plasma iron concentration in neonatal foals and its utility as an inflammatory marker in this population has been published.
Objectives:
To determine the physiologic plasma iron concentration in neonatal foals. To assess its utility as an inflammatory marker to predict systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) and as a prognostic marker.
Animals:
Forty-seven ill neonatal foals admitted to a referral equine hospital were divided in 2 groups based on the SIRS criteria (24 SIRS and 23 non-SIRS). Two control groups of 43 hospital and 135 stud farm healthy neonatal foals were also included.
Methods:
Observational prospective study. Data were summarized by mean and its 95% confidence interval and absolute frequency and percentage for quantitative andqualitative variables. One-way ANOVA, ANCOVA (group and age effects) and Dunnett as posthoc analysis were used to compare plasma iron concentration among groups.
Results:
Neonatal foals with SIRS did not have had any statistically significant different plasma iron concentrations compared to non-SIRS (P = .56) and stud farm control group (P = .99), 172.8 μg/dL (95% CI; 126.0-219.6), 193.1 μg/dL (139.1-247.2), and 181.8 μg/dL (171.3-192.4), respectively. Plasma iron concentration had a large variability in healthy neonatal foals, and was negatively correlated with age in hospital controls (rho = -0.387) and sick neonatal foals (rho = -0.598) (P < .001).
Conclusions And Clinical Importance:
Plasma iron was not a useful marker of SIRS in neonatal foals and was not associated with outcome.
More Related Videos
08:50A Murine Model of Fetal Exposure to Maternal Inflammation to Study the Effects of Acute Chorioamnionitis on Newborn Intestinal Development
Published on: June 24, 2020
08:45Quantitating Iron Transport Across the Mouse Placenta In Vivo Using Nonradioactive Iron Isotopes
Published on: May 10, 2022