Yikes at cost of Prescend/Pergolide!

0ldmare

0ldmare

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Went and collected another 160 1mg tablets yesterday and am now £260 poorer :eek: !!

Has anyone found a legit way of getting these cheaper (am assuming a prescription can't be used now as its now a horse only product?)
 
My old girls just been diagnosed with cushings, just started tablets and yet to have my bill so will wait with trepidation now!
 
I will be starting on the peroglide for my my old boy and I was shocked at 100 tablets for £104!! But yours must be gold plated......
 
Oh blimey CNM, that's a huge difference between what you are paying and what I have just been charged. Not happy, think I'll have a word with them. Is yours Prascend or p
Pergolide?
 
Severalyears ago I had a pony mare with Cushuings and had her on Pergolide. Cannot say that it helped much as she was still acutely laminitic, the rest I could deal with.

I started her on NAF D-tox and that made a big difference to her both with the laminitis and with the excessive drinking and consequent peeing. I had her on higher doses than was recommended and she was fine with careful monitoring for several years.
 
Oldmare search around in veterinary as there has been lots of info on the withdrawal of pergolide and substitution with exactly the same drug with a new and fancy name - and its accompanying rip-off license for use in horses. Hence the unforgiveable (IMO) price hike. Used to be under £40 for my 100 x 1mg tablets. I'm afraid I'd just PTS if I had to do it again... :mad: :(
 
I agree that I think I would go the pts route due to the cost, there are other drugs that can be used though that are probably cheaper, I know pergolide is the drug of choice as it obviously has the best results, but periactin sounds hopeful as an alternative if it is cheaper?

(Periactin®).
This seratonin blocker is available in tablet form, which is easily absorbed into the horse's system. A veterinarian will normally start a horse at a specific dose level (usually about 0.13 mg/kg, or about 58 mg for an average 440 kg horse), and increase it until you the clinical signs of Cushing's disease begin to improve.

The simplest way to gauge improvement is by monitoring the horse's water intake over a 24-hour period. This is best achieved by keeping the horse stabled and provided with water in a bucket. The dosage of medication is slowly increased until the horse's water intake returns to normal levels (usually taking about six to eight weeks). During this time, you will likely notice that other symptoms of Cushing’s disease , such as the heavy coat and pot belly, also disappear, and the horse regains vigour and muscle tone. After this level of improvement has continued for a month, the dosage of cyproheptadine is gradually reduced until a maintenance level is reached.

Cyproheptadine is effective in about 75 – 80 percent of cases.
 
Im paying £72 for 60 tablets of prescend, what im doing is missing a tablet twice a week to cut costs down {so far my pony seems to be ok with this}
 
I've just put in my last prescription with the chemist for pergolide, was £58 last time for 100, but as there is now a licensed horse equivalent, prascend, it is my understanding that pergolide can no longer be issued. Hate to think how much its going to cost me, pony is on 2 a day. :eek:
 
I'm paying about £80 for 100 tablets. I phoned round loads of local chemists (and looked online) and actually managed to knock down my nearest chemist down to this special price (by speaking direct to the owner, its a little local chemist, not a big firm/chain). It was £68 but has now gone up to about £80 (he did say it had gone up to such a degree that he should be charging me £100 so he really wasnt making much profit on me!).

Its quite ridiculous. How can people afford to treat their horses when prices are this stupid? Horses will suffer in the end.
 
MagicMelon, yours must be pergolide as prascend is not available from chemists, prepare for a shock next time round

Thanks for the website details, I'll definitely try there next time. It really is a crazy price, I nearly died when I saw the bill!
 
I wonder how many horses and ponies will be premature casualties of this decision - economics dictating the early decision to euthanise. It certainly influenced my decision to treat my pony - Pergolide had recently become available as a generic at a fraction of the cost of the original. I really can't see an excuse for this turnabout, and would be very interested to hear what prompted it.

Oh wait, I can guess - money :mad:
 
brighteyes said:
I wonder how many horses and ponies will be premature casualties of this decision - economics dictating the early decision to euthanise. It certainly influenced my decision to treat my pony - Pergolide had recently become available as a generic at a fraction of the cost of the original. I really can't see an excuse for this turnabout, and would be very interested to hear what prompted it.

Oh wait, I can guess - money :mad:
Click to expand...

Yup, of course it's all about money.

As far as I am aware Pergolide was always generic although prices from chemists did vary hugely - so was worth shopping around.

Prascend is licensed Pergolide for horses and marketed by Bohringer in the UK. Presumably licensed as Pergolide was due to be discontinued in the human market as an outdated treatment for Parkinsons disease.

It costs a huge amount of money to demonstrate efficacy and safety of any drug before it can be licensed, hence the price hike. On the plus side, had Bohringer not licensed Prascend, the likelihood is that we would have lost the most effective means of treating / managing PPID / ECD in horses and ponies.
 
^^^ this is how I understand it. Pergolide has already been withdrawn in USA and will shortly be in the UK, so something else had to be licensed. Re the cost of Prascend, I do feel it will make a big difference to how long people keep treating their horses. If I am honest I will have to think very hard about how long to keep our girl going, on 2 a day the cost is going to be horrendous.:(
 
I think the only difference between Pergolide and Prascend is that Prascend is exactly the same drug - just 'made' for horse ie, no different! From what I understand, laws have come in which don't allow vets to use human products for animals and therefore all animal equivalents have to be made at twice the price.
(I could be wrong though!:cool: )

My p/l girl has just gone on them at Christmas - PTS not justifiable, she is just too full of life, her owner has said she will find the money somehow and I can help, as we have done for other pets in the past (our GSD has cost us about 9,000 in 9 years and we haven't regretted a moment of finding this vets bill, that vets bill; just a good job we can manage it). She's luckily only on 1mg a day at the moment.

Not saying that I don't understand people saying PTS option, of course. Maybe the people making up these ridiculous laws should think from our point of view rather than theirs for once.
I don't even blame (the majority of!) vets as most of them think the same way as us; our vets are VERY good and always try and find the cheapest alternative for us...probably 'cause we spend so bloody much!!
K x
 
brighteyes said:
Ok - so what's in Prascend that's not in Pergolide? You telling me they have developed a whole other product? Sounds a bit doubtful to me.
Click to expand...

I am pretty sure it is the same, but Prascend has been developed and licensed for horses, whereas pergolide was for humans. I think I am right in saying that under the cascade system once an animal version of the drug is available the human version can no longer be prescribed, though as pergolide is no longer going to be available anyway its hobsons choice really.:(

ETS I agree with KH, I don't think you can blame the vets, mine has been great giving me prescription for pergolide for as long as possible when she possibly should have given prascend. She has said it is a shame the drug has been withdrawn as she thinks a lot of people will struggle to afford the alternative.
 
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My mare, now 16 has just seen her first year with Cushings. Thank goodness for insurance as she had imprints on for three changes and has been on 1mg of Pergolide every day. Needless to say the insurance claim time has now run its course and I have been reading on the net today that they are stopping vets from issuing Pergolide. Rang my vet tonight and apparently they have been unable to provide Pergolide for about three weeks now and when I asked what were they replacing it with and how much was it, I was asked "was I sitting down". Prescend will cost me £140 for 100 tablets compared with £110 for Pergolide. What is the answer folks? I was advised to look on the net for suppliers and I could get a prescription from the vets at a cost of £10.08 but as with everything, they need to see your animal every six months or no script. If anyone has found reasonably priced Prescend would be grateful for the info. I wish all who have horses with this disease all the best its a long road, I only hope that we can afford to keep our animals in the face of rising costs of treatment.
 
I no longer have my Meg, but she was on Pergolide. I was chatting to my vet a few weeks ago & said that lucky she was gone really as wouldn't have been able to afford the Prescend, he told me that if a horse is already on Pergolide then he can still continue to prescribe it, but new cases have to have Prescend, don't know if thats any help to you all.
 
Definately worth searching on the vet forum here about this. There have been quite a few posters who moved to products such as Naf cushineaze and other equivalents and reported very good results. I did all the research as was told my mare had cushings when she came home after being on loan. However my vet had to do all the tests again (dosage was mega high), then brought down the dosage, then took her off it and she is actually clear! not saying you can recover from Cushings, just looks like she was misdiagonised to start with. Yes we will keep an eye with the blood tests but she looks really well right now!
 
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