I recently ran across this article discussing how FDA is beginning to focus attention on compounding pharmacies, especially ones manufacturing sterile products. I followed the link in the article to the list of recent pharmacy inspections and clicked into a few of them.

The inspection report for Wedgewood was particularly terrible!!....I do use the compounded Pentosan from Wedgewood so this gave me significant pause and perhaps a good personal wake-up call.

I also recently attended a conference in Feb and was able to catch up with one of the top sterile manufacturing experts in the industry (helpful that he also happens to be a good friend of mine ). Without going into specific detail on why I was asking (I doattempt to keep my horsey and professional life separate! ), I inquired about the compounding of a sterile IM injectible and repeated usage from a single vial that extends over a period of several months (which describes exactly how i've used Pentosan- I get the big vial and withdrawn a single injection every 4 weeks until it was gone). As expected, he said that is just about the riskiest use of a sterile injectible that one could practice. Every time a needle pierces the top of the vial, there is significant chance of introducing subsequent contamination through the compromised stopper.

After thinking about everything, including the huge cost benefit of the Pentosan (believe me, I know what a factor cost is- it's one of the main reasons I've been using it too, in spite of myself- and I KNOW better ), I have decided my personal risk analysis is to stop getting the multi-use vial (unless I end up in a multiple-horse situation where I would use the vial up all in one administration) and go for the single-use vials. More expensive but still a big cost savings, and I feel this reduces the risk significantly in what I know to already be a risky practice (compounded sterile injectibles).

(Of course, this is until FDA decides that Pentosan fits the definition of an adulterated drug because there is already an approved therapy on the US market, and shuts it down everywhere!)

YMMV, but I hope this is useful information/ food-for-thought for everyone else on here using Pentosan or other similar therapies.