MEDICA Pietro

Pietro Medica took the degree in Veterinary Medicine in 1992 and the Ph. D. in Equine Physiology in 1997. He had grants in Equine Physiology from 1998 to 2002. Since 2002 he is Research Assistant in Veterinary Physiology at the University of Messina.
He involved with Arbeitsgruppe Pferd of Essen (Germany) searching on the conditioning programs to endurance test in Thoroughbred, standardized exercise test and thyroid and adrenocortical functions. He cooperated with the Research Institute for Animal Husbandry (Lelystad, The Netherlands) to carry out the research project "The effect of two different feeding regimes before and after SET on circulating levels of stress hormones and glycosaminoglycans in horses". He attended the Laboratory of Muscular Biopathology (Córdoba, Spain) directed from Prof. J.L. Lopez Rivero and he learned technical histochemistry and immunohistochemistry and imagery analysis on samples of equine skeletal muscle tissues. He was member of the Organizing Committee of 3rd Conference on Equine Sports Medicine and Science (Messina-Taormina, 2000) and he carried out post-conference practical course on “Performance diagnosis of sport potential of show jumpers: test design, procedure and evaluation”, in cooperation with Dr. Eric Barrey, I.N.R.A, France. The scientific activity (No. 104 publications) was carried out on topics related to adrenocortical and thyroid functions, opioid and serotoninergic systems in:
- horses during competitive (galloping, trotting race, western riding events, gimkana, show jumping competitions), no competitive (therapeutic riding events, equestrian activity) and training programs;
- in domestic animals (confined and transported stallions and donkeys, athletic horses, weaning and growing lambs and foals, milking stress in dairy cows and donkeys, barren and pregnancy mares, anaesthetic stress in aquatic organisms).
He is member of Italian Veterinary Society (S.I.S.vet.), and Italian Society of Veterinary Physiology.