Beginning in 1997, family and friends of Ran Ricks, who loved Thoroughbred race horses, provided generous donations of his memory in support of this professorship. Another long-time OSU supporter, the Robert Glenn Rapp Foundation, also contributed generously to this endowed faculty position that appropriately bears the name of both donors-- the Ricks-Rapp Professorship in Musculoskeletal Research.
Since his appointment to the Ricks-Rapp Professorship in 2001, MacAllister has broaden his scope beyond clinical duties and adds acclaimed research to his list of notable accomplishments.
“My long-term research interests have involved pharmacology, specifically applied to equine pain management and treatment of gastric ulceration. I’ve spent the last 25 years personally vested in the study of equine gastric ulcers and effective pain management in horses.” said MacAllister.
“This professorship has enabled me to maintain our herd of research horses over the years,” states MacAllister. “They are vital to our continued efforts.”
In fact, what makes these horses unique is they all have navicular syndrome, a disease affecting the navicular bone and the surrounding soft tissues in a horse’s hoof.
“These horses are ideal for study because they are chronically lame and provide the most natural form of lameness for our research purposes,” explains MacAllister. “They are consistently lame from day to day, so they are great for studying the pharmacodynamics of analgesic compounds, more commonly known as pain killers.”
MacAllister credits funds from the professorship as instrumental in the development of a force plate facility at the Equine Research Park. The force plate is an instrument mounted into a concrete runway and used to measure the force a horse exerts on the ground while moving.
“When a normal horse trots down the runway at a controlled speed, it will strike the force place with 100% ( + 5%) of its body weight. “If a horse is lame, it will strike the plate with a force anywhere from 50-90 percent of normal depending on the severity of the lameness.”
These findings allow MacAllister to introduce an analgesic compound and retest based upon how the horse responds to the compound.
Another advancement in technology that has enhanced our ability to study equine gastric ulceration is the introduction of long endoscopes, medical devices consisting of a long flexible tube containing light transmitting fibers with a camera at the tip. The endoscope is passed through the nasal passages and into the esophagus and stomach of the horse and is used for diagnostic examination.
“Before we had endoscopes long enough to reach a horse’s stomach, we really had no idea so many horses suffer from gastric ulcers,” explains MacAllister.
Now with technological advancements, research has revealed that 90 percent of race horses, 50 percent of other performance horses and 50 percent of foals suffer from gastric ulcers-numbers surprising to MacAllister and his team.
“With this new information we realized we needed to focus our efforts toward prevention and treatment of gastric ulcers,” remarks MacAllister. “As in people, some of the analgesic agents we use to treat lameness also produce gastric ulcers in horses.”
MacAllister’s research showed that the human drug omeprazolae was effective in treating equine gastric ulcers and that some of the other commonly used human antiulcer compounds were not as effective.
Now that an effective treatment for equine gastric ulceration has been established, MacAllister has turned his attentions to studying why the equine species has such a high incidence of this condition.
MacAllister supports and recognizes the importance of undergraduate research. Exciting students about careers in basic and applied biomedical research is one of his passions. In fact, the professorship funds have enabled students to attend the National Institute of Health
Dr. Michael Lorenz, Dean of the Center for Veterinary Health Sciences, sums it up by stating, “Endowed faculty chairs and professorships are essential to our ability to recruit and retain outstanding faculty members like Dr. MacAllister who are leaders in research and highly effective educators in the classroom. We are deeply grateful to the Rapp Foundation and the many family and friends of Ran Ricks who have created this enduring legacy that will benefit OSU faculty, students, and the equine industry in perpetuity.”
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