FDA-Approved Pentosan Now Available
Between 2009 and 2012, we had the luxury of accessing an injectable joint supplement from Matrix Animal Health called PentAussie. It combined Pentosan and glucosamine in a 12 cc intramuscular injection which provided systemic anti-inflammatory joint therapy similar to that of Adequan and Legend. But in 2013, the supply of PentAussie became scarce, and currently there is no official date that it will become available again.
Recently, the international pharmaceutical company CEVA introduced an FDA-approved pentosan injectable called Pentosan EQ. It comes in 6 cc vials (1 vial= 1 dose) and is available through your veterinarian.
HJ has compared Legend, Adequan and Pentosan and determined that all three can be useful- but their efficacy varies on a case-by-case basis most likely due to inherent factors that create the inflammatory profile of each horse. All three joint supplements require a veterinary prescription. Legend is administered by intravenous route while Adequan and Pentosan can be injected in the muscle. While several dosing schedules have been described, the majority of horse owners find that a loading series followed by monthly injections works well to ward off aches and pains in most horses.
Horse Transport
The Horse Transportation Safety Act, H.R. 4440/S. 1459 is currently making its way through the United States Congress and could use your support. The bill places a federal ban on the use of double-decker trailers for the transport of horses. Double-decker trailers do not provide horses with the adequate headroom they need. In addition, horses often must negotiate a steep ramp in and out of the second level of the trailer, which results in frequent stumbling, falling and pile-ups. For these reasons, the use of double-decker livestock trailers to haul horses places them at a high risk for injury or death.
Research has shown that a horse needs a minimum of seven to eight feet in height in order to fully raise its head while traveling. However, no trailer with two or more levels can meet those minimum humane transport requirements while staying within the maximum height limits that are necessary to travel under bridges in urban or rural environments.
While some states already have laws that prohibit the use of double-decker livestock trailers to transport horses, without a national law, there cannot be consistency to allow law enforcement to stop transporters in every state.
The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) already published a rule in 2011 that bans the use of double-decker trailers for transporting horses bound for slaughter, however the rule has little use now since horse slaughter is not currently occurring in the United States. Furthermore, all horses should be afforded the protection of the law, not just those bound for slaughter. For this reason, it is important to contact your congress representative and senator now and voice your support for the bill.
