Herbal pain relieving drugs

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coby

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Can anyone help me. I am researching herbal pain relieving drugs that could be used to mask lameness. Does anyone know of any articles about the effectiveness of these herbal products, and / or how they compare to traditional pain relieving drugs, such as, bute. Also, are there any drugs that could be used to mask lameness, but would not show up in blood tests. Many thanks for any help you may be able to give me.
 
There are unlikely to be any direct comparisons to bute etc as that would be done as a clinical trial which would be paid for by a pharmaceutical company and costs £££££'s - they only compare licensed precription meds. There may well be anecdotal evidence and articles around which you will probably find if you Google the subject BUT they are likely to be unscientific and unproven.

Alternatively you could contact the manufacturers of said herbal pain releiving products and ask if they have any evidence - to be able to make certain claims they woukld have to have publically available evidence.

Good luck.
 
IMO, herbal drugs cannot be directly compared to Pharma Drugs. They can be seen as alternatives, in the same way that you might take Ibuprofen or Codeine. Some are more effective than others.

When we look for new prospective drugs for a specific target (I work in Drug Discovery), we look at the size of the chemical, its shape and how well it binds to the target, if it binds at all. Quite often, the chemical is one that occurs in nature (in other words, is a herb), but what happens in drug discovery is modification of that naturally occurring chemical. The original herbal derivative might bind to the same target as a manufactured one, but the modifications might mean that it binds 10x stronger, or has less off-target effects. Does that make sense? In short, the manufactured versions can become so far off what they started out as, they really aren't comparable in the same way as you'd perhaps compare different coffees, or leather dressings!

Not sure about the masking lameness issue. I suppose herbal formulations that perhaps enhance euphoria or increase adrenalin production might mask lameness, but I don't know enough about what is tested for (biochemically) on the competition circuit to answer that one properly!
 
IMO herbal supplements do not mask pain as such, they may ease a certain amount of discomfort but I dont feel they can be anywhere near as effectve as an analgesic as the traditional drugs such as bute.
 
people do have sucess with herbal products. and in some horses they are effective enough to mask lameness. the way horses respond to herbal preperations varies alot from non effective to effective.
there is in part due to alot of variation between the herbal products themselves- some will contain more of the active ingredient.some will contain the herb but not a part of the herb that actually contains the ingredient. also the amount of the active ingredient can vary depending on the stage of growth, time of year and growing conditions of the plant.
then the way it is presented can also cause issues- lots of the active ingredient will never reach the site they are needed as they will be destroyed by the gastrointestinal tract long before.
the problem is, the herbal product market is unregulated. therefore there is no standard that the products have to meet in order to be sold on the market.

conventional drugs have to undergo many tests to prove efficacy and safety and establish the side effect profile and dose ranges. once they are granted permission to put them on the market the strength of each dose form(eg tablet) has to be quality control tested to ensure each product contains the same amount of active ingredient AND that its in a form that will be useable by the body.

so at the moment the two are not really directly comparable.

one of the places that may have articles is pubmed.

FEI may have information about what is traceable or banned in blood tests.
 
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