The cold and damp weather has settled in, at least in Northwest Washington. This time of year we get a lot of calls asking for advice on how to take care of the older geriatric horse especially with regards to arthritis, metabolic disease, and weight gain. Fortunately we have many choices of feeds, supplements, and medications at our disposal to help these older animals live longer and healthier lives.

Unfortunately, many of these feeds, supplements and medications are unlicensed, unregulated, and frankly not proven to work. As you probably have found out already, the price tags on these items are not small. In this article I hope to cover the differences between FDA approved drugs, generics, supplements, and nutraceuticals and what kind of products could have some benefit for your horse.

FDA Approved Drugs

What is FDA licensing? The Food and Drug Administration has developed a process through which companies submit new medications to obtain approval to treat or prevent a disease. The company must prove target animal safety, demonstrate that it works, and describe its impact on the environment.

FDA-approved drugs for horses are proven to work based on scientific studies and are legal for you or your veterinarian to use for treatment of your horse. This approval process can be extremely expensive and time-consuming especially in the animal industry where the economic gains for a company may not off-set the cost of drug licensing. If there is not an approved or licensed medication for horses for a particular disease, but there is a human approved form of a medication that has shown benefit for horses, your veterinarian can prescribe it extra-label if there is a valid veterinarian-client-patient relationship.

Generic Drugs

Generic drugs are also legal to use. A true generic drug is licensed through the FDA but does not have to go through as many hoops as the original FDA approved product (the pioneer drug). It must have the exact chemical makeup or at least be equivalent to the pioneer medication. In the equine industry there have been multiple accounts of medications advertised or sold as "generics" but were not licensed as a generic. Basically they had similar chemical makeup, but they were licensed for another use. The use of an unlicensed product for a disease or syndrome can be illegal in some cases.

Nutraceuticals & Feed Supplements

Nutraceuticals and feed supplements fall into a completely different category. Nutraceuticals are dietary supplements that contain vitamins, minerals, herbs, extracts, amino acids, or metabolites. Human dietary supplements are regulated by the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act.

Equine products are not and fall somewhere in between a drug and a feed ingredient. What does this mean?  Well, basically over the last 10-15 years there has been a wave of products marketed to the equine community to cure about anything. Many are for real, but there are also plenty of gimmicks.

Because they are considered supplements and not drugs, they do not fall under FDA regulation and therefore do not have to have efficacy or toxicity studies to back up the claims of the product. Also a food supplement cannot actually make a claim on the label that states it can remedy or prevent an illness unless it is a licensed product.

This is not to say that all these products do not work or are illegal, but consumers need to be aware of what they are buying and that many are unproven scientifically. Fortunately groups such as The American Association of Equine practitioners, research veterinarians and scientists, and some of the supplement manufacturers themselves are doing more to assess the efficacy and safety of certain ingredients in horses.

Which supplement Does Your Horse Need?

Finally you need to ask what supplements your horse needs.  First of all an evaluation of your horses’ diet by your veterinarian or nutritionist may help reveal areas of trace mineral and vitamin excesses and deficiencies. Also a history, physical exam, and evaluation of the horse’s job or purpose is imperative in the decision of what supplement the horse needs or doesn’t need. Does the horse have arthritis?  Does it have a metabolic condition?  Does it “tie-up” easily?  There is a supplement out there for every problem you can think up and probably for problems you’ve never heard of.

The ingredients that are getting the most attention right now are glucosamine, chondroitin sulfate, and MSM. There does seem to be at least some benefit in promoting joint health and improving lameness scores in horses known to have osteoarthritis, with a commercial product that contains a combination of glucosamine hydrochloride, chondroitin sulfate, manganese, and vitamin C. This doesn’t mean that every product that has or reports to have these ingredients will have the same result. In fact since there is little regulation of nutraceuticals, they may not even have the same ingredients in the tub. Tests with MSM in horses are still lacking, but research in humans shows some promise.