Lunch with the Experts: Therapeutic Manipulation of the Equine Intestinal Microbiome: Current Strategies and Clinical Evidence

This session reviews how—and how well—current therapies can manipulate the equine intestinal microbiome. We will synthesize key findings from the peer-reviewed literature on clinical and microbiological outcomes of directed interventions in adult horses and foals. We will also present the speakers’ unpublished data to highlight emerging approaches, real-world implementation issues, and gaps where evidence is still evolving. 
Discussion will focus on probiotics, prebiotics (including targeted substrates and diet-based modulation), postbiotics and fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT). We will present practical recommendations based on recent studies evaluating the viability of the FMT procedure, with particular attention to patient and donor selection, dosing/administration strategies, and risk mitigation. We will also discuss the frequent queries we receive about mitigating the impact of disease, as well as management and treatment in post-GIT surgery cases (e.g., antimicrobial therapy). 
The session concludes with a pragmatic framework for integrating current evidence into clinical decision-making and for prioritizing future research.