Ketosis is currently regarded as a major metabolic disorder of dairy cows, reflective of the animal's efforts to adapt to energy deficit while transitioning into lactation. Currently viewed as a pathology by some, ketosis is associatively implicated in milk production losses and peripartal health complications that increase the risk of early removal of cows from the herd, thus carrying economic losses for dairy farmers, and jeopardizing the sustainability of the dairy industry. Despite decades of intense research in the mitigation of ketosis and its sequelae, our ability to lessen its purported impacts remains limited. Moreover, the association of ketosis to reduced milk production and peripartal disease is often erratic and likely mired by concurrent potential confounders. In this review we discuss the potential reasons for these apparent paradoxes in the light of currently available evidence, with a focus on the limitations of observational research, and the necessary steps to unambiguously identify the impacts of ketosis on cow health and performance via controlled randomized experimentation. A nuanced perspective is proposed that considers the dissociation of ketosis -as a disease- from healthy hyperketonemia. Furthermore, in consideration of a growing body of evidence that highlights positives roles of ketones in the mitigation of metabolic dysfunction and chronic diseases, we consider the hypothetical functions of ketones as health-promoting metabolites and ponder on their potential usefulness to enhance dairy cow health and productivity.
Keywords: Ketosis; dairy cow; hyperketonemia; paradigm shift.
© 2024, The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. and Fass Inc. on behalf of the American Dairy Science Association®. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).