Background: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a prevalent degenerative joint disease that causes chronic pain and lameness in horses. While several objective gait analysis systems have been developed and validated to quantify the severity of lameness in horses, methods to assess whether peripheral sensitisation contributes to the pain experienced are lacking.

Objectives: To assess whether periarticular pressure pain mapping can be proposed as an ancillary assessment tool in horses. The specific objectives were to assess the feasibility and intra- and inter-rater reliability of determining pain thresholds to pressure (PPT) at sites overlying the distal thoracic limb joints of clinically healthy horses.