Monday, December 16, 2013

Study Raises Questions About Antibleeding Drug By JOE DRAPE Published: December 16, 2013

Horses treated with the race-day antibleeding medication furosemide bled at a greater rate than horses that did not receive the drug, a study released by the Breeders’ Cup on Monday found.
The study was conducted among 2-year-old horses running in early November on the card at the Breeders’ Cup in Southern California. A team of veterinarians led by Dr. Nathan Slovis of Hagyard Equine Medical Institute in Lexington, Ky., performed an endoscopic exam, which inserts a camera down a horse’s windpipe, to see if, and at what level, the horse showed signs of exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage after a race.
They were granted permission by the owners of 55 horses, and the proportion of horses that bled significantly was greater amongfurosemide-treated horses (71 percent, or 10 out of 14) than among untreated horses (37 percent, or 15 out of 41), according to the study. In addition, five of the 14 horses (36 percent) treated with furosemide were scored as having bled in the higher ranges of the scale, compared with three of the 41 untreated horses, or 7 percent.
“This is not what I was expecting to find,” Slovis said. “I was expecting animals that were not given furosemide would have an increased score” on bleeding. “That’s what I expected to find. We did not find that in this small group.”
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