Nutrition | EQUINE
Unintended Consequences
Lastly, Pagan described examples of unexpected results
stemming from equine research findings. “You do
something you think is really good but has side effects
you didn’t expect,” he said.
Take furosemide (Salix), for instance, a common
diuretic administered to race and performance horses
to prevent exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage
(aka “bleeding”). As it turns out, the drug has a
performance-enhancing side effect in that it causes
horses to urinate frequently and, hence, lose body
weight—a desirable reaction in racehorses.
But what about the dietary consequences? Frequent
urination also causes horses to lose the electrolytes
sodium and chloride and even calcium, putting their
mineral balance out of whack. Pagan said his team
studied this and found that these mineral levels go into
negative balance on the day of Salix administration.
“By administering a medication meant to prevent
bleeding, we inadvertently caused a change in
electrolyte and calcium requirements,” he said. As
a result, they developed an electrolyte replacement
product to encourage horses to drink and correct these
imbalances.
Another example Pagan used was the administration
of omeprazole (GastroGard) to treat gastric ulcers.
This widely used medication might affect calcium
absorption, and scientists have been suggested that it
might result in reduced bone strength in humans. In
one study, the KER team found that omeprazole causes
a 20% reduction in calcium digestibility in horses. “Are
we trading one problem for another?” Pagan asked.
“Horse owners should recognize that their horses may
have higher requirements for calcium when they are
administered omeprazole and/or furosemide.”
The Future
As technologies and techniques advance, equine
nutrition research hones in on new problems and
topics. Pagan predicted that the future research
landscape will focus on nutrigenomics (the study of
nutrition’s effect on gene expression) and nutrigenetics
(how genes influence the body’s response to nutrition).
What we feed our horses might just be affecting our
horses’ genes and genetic expression.
• Volume 21 Issue 1 | March 2019 •
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