Painful cramps, uncontrollable shaking, and gait problems inhibit movement in horses with shivers, a chronic neuromuscular syndrome. In 2015, Dr. Stephanie Valberg and her team published a paper that was the first to describe the specific types of shivers. Dr. Valberg, now the Mary Anne McPhail Dressage Chair in Equine Sports Medicine at MSU, continues to break new ground in our understanding of the syndrome. Her team has now determined that shivers may be due to the degeneration of specific cells in a part of the brain called the cerebellum.

This spring, Dr. Valberg partnered with Dr. Josh Aman, a post-doctoral associate in the Department of Neurology at the University of Minnesota, to investigate this theory by conducting research that correlated hind limb muscle recruitment patterns with gait abnormalities and cerebellar degeneration. Now the team is working to determine whether shivers is inherited. This research investigates the molecular pathways that become dysregulated in the cerebellums of shivers horses.