Michelle Woodward's research while affiliated with Louisiana State University and other places

... The treatment for EM requires discontinuing any drug suspected to be causing the pathology (in case of a drug-related etiology); fluid therapy initiation is recommended in cases of widespread skin lesions and antibiotic use to prevent a secondary wound infection (7). Treatment with glucocorticoids or other immunosuppressive drugs is still controversial, since cases have been reported where these drugs led to a successful resolution of the disease (14), particularly in idiopathic cases of EM (8), and where even the prolonged administration of prednisolone did not demonstrate any improvement (6,7). New treatment methods have been reported in dogs and cats, such as administration of human intravenous immunoglobulins (IVIG) as monotherapy or in addition to immunosuppressive drugs, both of which have shown promising results (7,14). ...

... As a primary drug, the use of macrolides, such as clarithromycin or azithromycin, is essential. Initial therapy should include at least two antibiotics and, in some cases, up to three to avoid antibiotic resistance [5], [7], [15]- [17]. There are no consensus guidelines on the treatment of MAC in the veterinary literature and no completely effective treatment for widespread infections caused by MAC is described. ...

... 36 Since 2012 clinical trials assessing the efficacy of benzoyl peroxide and ethyl lactate for the treatment of pyoderma in dogs have not been published. The only in vitro studies 21,24 published after 2012 showed minimal to no antibacterial activity of mousses and shampoo containing ethyl lactate on treated hairs. In fact, mousse 21,25 and shampoo 24 containing 10% ethyl lactate had none to minimal residual effect on S pseudintermedius; however, this could be explained because the antibacterial action of ethyl lactate is mainly due to its hydrolyzation into ethanol and lactic acid occurring on the skin. ...

... Cellophane tape preparation: A cellophane tape preparation is used rather than a skin scraping to illustrate the presence of mites or lice that dwell largely on the skin's surface (e.g., Cheyletiella spp.). Clean cellophane tape is adhered to the skin, to collect epidermal debris [13]. A mineral oil ribbon is kept on a glass slide, and the tape's adhesive surface is placed on the glass slide before being placed on the mineral oil. ...

... IDTs were, until now, considered the most sensitive and confirmatory skin tests for horses [16,24,26,36], and although some authors still argue in favor of IDTs [37], according to others [2], allergic horses may sometimes present several positive reactions to multiple allergens in IDTs, even to those allergens that are unlikely to cause allergies. Multiple studies over the years have shown that even healthy horses can react to IDTs [12,[36][37][38], which can frequently induce false positive reactions in clinically healthy individuals [39,40]. This may represent an additional challenge to identify the allergens that truly induce disease. ...

... 37,48 In horses affected by ESGD, chelated minerals containing zinc have been studied 49 ; in particular, in one recent study zinc-methionine proved to be beneficial in reducing ESGD scores after omeprazole treatment. 50 Moreover, in human beings, zinc contributes to the maintenance of membrane barrier structure and function, which is especially important in the gastro-intestinal tract 37 : in fact, serum zinc level is considered an indicator of gastric mucosal damage, 51 and zinc complexes have been reported to have antiulcer activity. 37,52 Also C. sativa Mill. ...

... In the current study, an improvement in ESGD score was observed in nearly all horses over 4 weeks, after they were moved from pasture to individual stalls, and healing occurred in 7 of 14 animals. This is somewhat unexpected, as spontaneous healing is considered uncommon, but similar to what was reported by Woodward et al. [41], although the reduction in ulcer scores at 21 days was only significant in the control group in that study. As there was no difference in terms of the improvement or healing of ESGD between the supplement and control groups, the explanation must be sought in other factors. ...

... It is a type I hypersensitivity reaction to proteins in the saliva of Culicoides spp. (McKelvie et al. 2001;van der Haegen et al. 2001;Schaffartzik et al. 2012;Wilson 2014;Woodward et al. 2014). The disease occurs globally, variably referred to as sweet itch, Queensland itch and kasen. ...