Equine Drugs, Medications, and Performance Altering Substances: Their Performance Effects, Detection, and Regulation

By Thomas Tobin, Fernanda Camargo, Andreas Lehner*, Wojciech Karpiesiuk, and Charlie Hughes 

Equine Pharmacology, Therapeutics and Toxicology Laboratory
The Maxwell H. Gluck Equine Research Center
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY 40546-0099

The Livestock Disease Diagnostic Center*
Lexington, KY 40512

Mr. Kent Stirling
Florida Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association 
P.O Box 1808
Opa Loca, FL 33055-0808 


Based on a presentation to the Equine Law section
of the Kentucky Bar Association at Keeneland,
Lexington, Kentucky, Oct 21, 2005.

Table of Contents

  1   Summary
  2   Background and Definitions
  3   History
  4   Can Drugs or Medications Influence the Outcome of a Race?
  5   The Introduction of ELISA Testing (1988) 
  6   Mass Spectral Confirmation
  7   "Zero Tolerance" Testing
  8   Medication Dosing and Elimination
  9   Thresholds, Including "No Effect Thresholds" (NETs)
10   Withdrawal Time Guidelines
11   The Kentucky Medication Rule
12   The Proposed Racing Medication Testing Consortium (RMTC) Rule
13   Further Reading
14   Appendices 


1. Summary

Thoroughbred Racing has been testing for drugs and medications since about 1903.  Today, racehorse testing is by far the longest established, broadest in scope and most sensitive drug testing performed on earth. Racehorse testing is also performed within an extremely stringent regulatory context, and my understanding is that many of our constitutional protections as US citizens are inoperative in the racing environment. Racehorse testing is also remarkably “clean,” as the incidence of deliberate use of performance affecting substances seems to be very small. 

There are good reasons for all of the above. It is empirically clear that medication is highly likely to influence the performance of racing horses, although the scientific evidence for this is less than overwhelming. 

In the mid-nineteen eighties, the use of high potency drugs was not particularly well controlled. Following a directive from the Kentucky State Racing Commission, an interdisciplinary team at the University of Kentucky adapted ELISA testing to racing chemistry; this proprietary technology basically solved the problem of the abuse of high potency drugs in racing horses, and these tests are now marketed worldwide. 

Advances in testing are research driven. Once a medication is called, its use drops dramatically, to close to zero, but not quite zero; it appears that there are always people ready to try a medication that worked for them, or for a colleague, or for a rival, in the past.

Overall, the rate at which medication violations are reported in racing is extremely small. For example, from 1995–1999 there were about 3 positives for every 100,000 samples for ARCI Class 1 violations after trace identifications of dietary and environmental substances were eliminated. By far, the most common identifications reported are “traces” of therapeutic medications, and dietary and environmental substances. 

The ease with which “traces” of therapeutic medications, dietary and environmental substances can be detected using current testing technology is leading scientists and regulators away from the old “zero tolerance” approach, which many authorities now see as outdated, to regulatory limits or thresholds. 

ELISA testing allows highly sensitive detection of trace amounts (“tail ends”) of therapeutic medications, environmental and dietary substances. In the nineties, following another Kentucky Racing Commission directive, the Gluck program at the University of Kentucky pioneered the basic research that underpins the evolving and increasing use of regulatory “thresholds” in racing regulation. 

More recent challenges include developing effective regulatory methods for the newer recombinant hormonal products such as the various human recombinant erythropoietin products and variants and growth hormones. Within the last year a high quality ELISA test has been made available for human recombinant erythropoietin and racing scored a major scientific breakthrough by developing the first Mass Spectral Confirmation method to detect use of recombinant erythropoietin (rhEPO) in horses or any species. 


2. Background and Definitions

There are at least 10 million known chemical substances and 4,000 or more prescription medications. Regulators in the United States, therefore, divide drugs and medications into two major groups:

The largest group comprises "Performance-enhancing substances", whose identification in a horse is viewed with great regulatory concern. Testing for these substances usually proceeds at the highest level of sensitivity possible; so-called "zero-tolerance" testing. About 850 or so substances are classified by the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) Uniform Classification System for Foreign Substances as potentially performance enhancing in a five class system, the most complete listing of such substances available (http://www.arci.com/druglisting.pdf). 

The second smaller group comprises the "therapeutic medications". There are approximately 50 plus of these used therapeutically in horses in training (Table 1). Since about 2000, it has come to be much more generally accepted that we must set “limitations” on testing for therapeutic medications. These limitations are variously called thresholds or reporting levels, or decision levels (California) depending on the semantic preference of individual jurisdictions. 


Table 1.  Therapeutic Medications Routinely Used and Identified as Necessary by the Veterinary Advisory Committee: (Racing Medication and Testing Consortium {RMTC} draft list of therapeutic medications, 2005) 

 
3. History

Up to 100 years ago there was little concern about the use of medication in racing horses, particularly in North America. The 1800s had seen the purification of cocaine and morphine and availability of these substances made the acute stimulant medication of racing horses a reality. Around the turn-of-the-century (1890-1910), a number of American trainers went to Europe, taking with them the new American medications. As a group, they were so successful that they became known in European racing venues as the "Yankee Alchemists".


Figure 1.  Carl Vernet depicts pre-race dosing.  ca. 1810

In the early 1900s the Honorable Mr. George Lambton, the leading English trainer of his time, grew tired of losing to the "Yankee Alchemists", as he also soon grew tired of politely requesting the English Jockey Club to do “something” about the problem. He therefore purchased some American "medications", and publicly announced that certain horses in certain races were going to be, well, shall we say, "medicated". These activities soon gained the Jockey Club's attention, and in 1903 the medication of a racing horse was made an offense against the rules of racing in England. The record is silent as to how these rules were to be enforced, but the prescribed punishment was to be "ruled off the turf", a punishment still in place in parts of the English speaking world. 



Figure 2.

Somewhat farther from home, a trainer by the name of James Keene was also having a very good run in Russia. This came to an abrupt halt one day, when Mr. Keene was met in the paddock by a Russian racing official, followed by Russian chemist, complete with a basket of frogs. Some saliva was taken from Mr. Keene's horse, and presumably force-fed to the frog, which then reportedly behaved in a most un-frog-like way. Mr. Keene's horse was duly declared "positive"; shortly thereafter, Mr. Keene left Russia and returned to Kentucky, where he founded a farm called Keeneland. 

Classic analytical race testing as we know it started in France in the early 1900s; in 1935, Mr. William Woodward sent Dr. Catlett, a veterinarian, and Dr. Morgan, a chemist, from Florida to France to learn the French drug testing techniques. They returned to Florida and set up the first US drug testing lab; later the New York Racing Commission opened a racing chemistry laboratory on the10th floor of a building on Chambers Street in Manhattan. In 1947 the Association of Official Racing Chemists was formed. 

Figure 3.  Robert Vessiny

The late Mr. Robert Vessiny, Truesdail Labs, Tustin, CA, circa 2000. His working career, beginning in 1941 at the NY Commission Laboratory on Chamber Street in Manhattan and continuing until 2005, covered virtually the entire history of US racehorse testing, which started about 1935 in Florida and New York under Dr. Charles Morgan.

4. Can Drugs or Medications Influence the Outcome of a Race?

Drugs and medications can be used to influence the outcome of races in a number of ways. Acute stimulant medication is the administration of a stimulant substance to a horse shortly before post. Among the especially useful agents in this area are the opiates, which have long been used in racing horses, and also the amphetamine like stimulants, especially methylphenidate (Ritalin). All of these have been widely used, the opiates likely for hundreds of years, and presumably particularly so when testing for these agents was not available.

Figure 4.

     Figure 5.


As testing improved those individuals seeking an “opiate edge” began to use the more potent and thus more difficult to detect opiates. The unnamed but highly potent opiate at the far left of the above family of dose response curves is etorphine, or “elephant juice”. Etorphine is one of the most potent opiates known and at the time that this figure was published in “Drugs and the Performance Horse” in 1981, there was no test available that could detect it. This figure also shows, for one family of substances, the 10,000 fold range in dose/potency from the least potent opiate tested on the right, meperidine, at about a one gram/horse doses, to the highly potent etorphine on the far left, with 50 micrograms (50 millionths of a gram) producing an equivalent pharmacological effect to a gram or more of meperidine. And, of course, etorphine was, in round figures, about 10,000 time more difficult to detect than the old standbys of morphine and heroin, one of whose street names was “horse”. This great increase in the potency of medications being used in horses set the stage for the development of ELISA Testing, as we will discuss.

Horses can also be medicated to win by relaxing them, and allowing the horse to run its best possible race. The widely used tranquilizer acepromazine, and any number of related or equivalent agents, have been used in this way. 

Improving a horses “wind” by opening its airways through the use of bronchodilators may also improve the performance of horse, and especially one that is sub-clinically broncho-constricted. In this regard, at one time the best selling ELISA test was a particularly good bronchodilator test. 

Figure 6.   Only triple dead heat on record

Figure 7.  Grindstone wins by a nose

The difficulty with trying to scientifically demonstrate performance effects of drugs in small numbers of horses is that the drug needs to produce a positive performance effect of about the same magnitude as Secretariat’s win at Belmont (Fig. 8) to meet the lowest level of statistical significance acceptable in science. This is a considerable experimental challenge; another way of looking at this is that successful horse trainers make far more subtle and discriminating judgments than most scientists, of which I think there is no doubt whatsoever.

Figure 8.  Secretariat wins at Belmont

Veterinarians certify horses as being sound in "wind and limb." Obviously, medications that can affect these parameters and also the “attitude” or “behavior” of a horse have the potential to affect the both the presentation of a horse and also, presumably, the results of the ultimate performance analysis, the outcome of a race. By the mid-nineteen eighties the use of highly potent drugs and medications such as fentanyl (sublimase) and etorphine had created a considerable problem for race testing.


5. The Introduction of ELISA Testing, 1988

In the mid-1980s, race testing was for all practical purposes dependent on a primary screening technique called Thin Layer Chromatographic (TLC) screening. This technology was not particularly sensitive, and in the mid-1980s some horsemen were reportedly using high potency narcotics, stimulants, bronchodilators and tranquilizers with impunity. In 1985 we were requested (directed?) by the then Kentucky State Racing Commission to "fix this problem". The solution that we came up with, ELISA testing for high potency drugs and medications, is in place around the world today, and is evidenced here in Lexington by a thriving concern, Neogen Corp, on Nandino Boulevard, employing 100 people bringing in about US $30 million a year into Lexington (not all through ELISA tests --  www.neogen.com/forensickits.htm)

The term ELISA is an acronym that stands for Enyme Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay. Simply put, an ELISA test is a variant on the home pregnancy test technology. It requires a drop of urine; it can be performed relatively rapidly, it is/can be highly sensitive and can be read by eye. When ELISA testing was first introduced, the problem was to keep the technology from "putting down” too many trainers, especially in those jurisdictions that had frozen “back samples”. Let me simply say that this was a turbulent time for me professionally, but matters eventually settled down and, as I indicated, ELISA testing is the backbone of drug screening worldwide today.

Figure 9.  ELISA Testing

This is a 96 well ELISA plate in which the full blue color has been developed in most wells. The clear wells on the left hand side are the “positive controls” containing calibration standards. All of the other wells represent ELISA “negative” urine samples. A “track” ELISA positive would show up as a clear well in the middle of the blue samples, a so called “whiteout”, or an ELISA “positive”.

Figure 10.  ELISA Test Results

An ELISA test will usually detect about 5ng/ml (or 5 parts per billion) of drug or drug metabolite in the sample. Some tests are 10 fold more sensitive, detecting down to the high parts per trillion. To put these figures in perspective, one part per billion is one second in your life if you are 32 years old. 

To put the matter of testing sensitivity in regulatory perspective, a sure prescription for regulatory friction/problems is a therapeutic medication (or a dietary or environmental substance) given at higher (gram) doses to horses, excreted efficiently in urine, and being tested for by an analyst with a highly sensitive ELISA test with no thresholds/decision levels in place. In the absence of “thresholds” or detection limits in place, a sensitive ELISA test can become basically a hunting tool/license for forensic chemists, with isoxsuprine, an ARCI class 4 medication, being a classic example. 

Finally, we must always remember that an ELISA test simply binds to and “sees” one side/surface of the medication molecule. Therefore, while an ELISA “negative” is almost certainly a true negative, an ELISA test will, by definition, interact with many substances other than the drug in question; as such, the rule with an ELISA “positive” is that it can always be, by definition, a “false positive”. Which is, of course why, chemists follow screening tests such as ELISA tests with Mass Spectral confirmations. 


6. Mass Spectral Confirmation

While ELISA screening/testing is fast and highly sensitive, it is, as set forth above, far from specific. The second and absolutely critical and essential step in the testing process is confirmatory testing, usually Mass Spectral confirmation. In this step, the molecule is isolated and its precise mass measured, and the molecule is also broken into a series of fragments. Both the mass and relative proportions of these fragments (the fragmentation pattern) are specific for the given drug, and are then matched with known controls/standards run through the system at the same time. A full scan mass spectrum, with appropriate matching controls, is the "gold standard" in drug testing, and is considered definitive evidence for the presence of the substance in the sample in question. Independent replication of the primary findings in the "split" or "referee" analysis usually neutralizes any challenges in the area of analytical chemistry.

Figure 11.  Dr. Lehner and the LC/MS/MS

Figure 12.

Figure 13.

Comparison of Mass Spectra of a post-race etorphine and an authentic standard. The lower figure shows the mass spectrum of an authentic etorphine laboratory standard. Note the molecular ion at mass 483, the base peak at mass 272 and the various other ions of the standard or control spectrum. Note the very close correspondence of the standard or control mass spectrum with the mass spectrum of the derivatized material recovered from the post-race sample, indicating that the material recovered is indistinguishable from authentic derivatized etorphine.


7. Zero Tolerance Testing

“Zero Tolerance” testing is not testing down to "Zero" molecules, which no chemist can accomplish, but rather testing to the Limit of Detection (LOD) of the best available technology. While this may be an entirely appropriate approach for performance altering substances which have no place in racing, it is absolutely not considered appropriate for therapeutic medications. Therapeutic medications are substances used to maintain the health and welfare of horses, and to arbitrarily change the sensitivity of testing for these agents depending on either the whim of the chemist or the just now, today, availability of an improved technology is entirely inappropriate, as we will see from review of the basic mathematics of medication dosing and elimination.

8. Medication Dosing and Elimination:

When you administer a dose of phenylbutazone to a horse, you administer more phenylbutazone molecules than there are stars in the known universe, that is about 6 followed by 21 zeros molecules. This is a very large number of molecules indeed. 

The horse will eliminate the bulk of this dose of phenylbutazone quite rapidly. If phenylbutazone in the horse has a 7.22 hour half-life, 50% of the drug will be eliminated by 7.22 hours post dosing, 75% by 14.5 hours post dosing, 87.5 by about 22 hours post dosing, and exactly 90% by 24 hours post- dosing. At the end of day 1, when 90% of the drug is eliminated, the pharmacology of the drug is gone, but you still have 6 followed by 20 zeros worth of phenylbutazone molecules in the body. Every day another 90% of the drug in the body will be eliminated, and other zero drops off, but if the chemist really wants to look, he or she can well find traces of the medication or its metabolites for 14 days post administration, a time post-administration that even the most conservative chemists and regulators generally do not wish to pursue an identification. However, the question now arises of when, precisely, should the chemist stop pursuing these traces?

Figure 14.

9. Thresholds, Including "No Effect Thresholds" (NETs)

The answer to this question is simple; the chemist should stop pursuing these traces precisely when he/she is instructed to stop. It is, however, slightly more complicated to determine the exact point at which the chemist should be instructed to cease and desist.

We approached this question experimentally in the Gluck Equine Research Center during the second half of the nineties. Simply put, we administered decreasing doses of local anesthetics to horses until we saw no local anesthetic effect, which gave us the No Effect Dose. Then we measured the concentrations of the drug, actually its metabolites, in the urine, and the concentrations we came up with are obviously not associated with any pharmacological effect. These concentrations then become “No Effect Thresholds” in urine for the specific therapeutic medication, and the chemist is advised not to test below these concentrations, plus an added safety factor.


  Figures 15 - 17      Equine response to heat lamp stimuli

We presented this scenario hypothetically in 1994-95, and then started the actual research. We were immediately vigorously attacked from conservative quarters, anonymously and libelously. In 1996 one of these libelous letters surfaced signed by Mrs. Donna Ewing of the Illinois Hooved Animal Humane Society. The University of Kentucky "encouraged me,” shall we say, to sue, which I did. Mr. Henry E. Davis was my attorney. While the suit was eventually dropped, it had the desired effect of silencing the complaining parties, who have not been heard from since in racing. More to the point, we completed the research and published it in the refereed scientific literature. By the year 2000, the intellectual concept and more importantly, the actual word "thresholds" became more or less "safe" for a courageous racing administrator to allow past his (or her) lips.  Indeed now, in January 2007, the concept of “thresholds” is well established, at least in North America. 

In this regard, the concept approach of "zero tolerance" was to some extent officially voted out of favor and “off the regulatory island” in the opening paper of the International Conference of Racing Analysts and Veterinarians (ICRAV) 2000 at Cambridge, England. In this paper Professor Robert L. Smith addressed the concept of zero tolerance, which he considered a "fading illusion," and reviewed the events "which are increasingly undermining the suitability of this approach."  In his words, "The zero tolerance approach . . . is in essence an illusion in which the magician is the racing chemist." He continued,"The zero tolerance approach is both philosophically and pragmatically unsound. . . . The goal for the future integrity of racing is to develop "reporting values" for therapeutic substances based upon rigorous analysis of their pharmacological and pharmacokinetic properties and using an appropriate model.”


10. Withdrawal Time Guidelines

Let us now move from the theoretical and illusionary concept of "zero tolerance" to practical horsemen’s concerns. A “threshold” or a “reporting level” is a concentration value (say, for example 10 parts per billion in urine ) that has, in the larger scheme of things, little actual reality for horsemen, since a horseman, or a chemist locked out of his laboratory, cannot “see” 10 parts per billion of anything in horse urine. What the horseman needs are clear, transparent “withdrawal time guidelines”: i.e., guidelines as to when he should stop administering the medication prior to post so that the blood or urine "reading" comes in below the stipulated threshold, whatever that particular threshold may be. 

This question may actually be considerably more difficult to answer than the threshold determination. The only way to answer this question is, again, by actual experimental determination, followed by field application. The specific medication product in question must be defined, the formulation, dose, route, and duration of administration specified. The medication must be administered to a significant number, hopefully at least 20-50, of Thoroughbred horses in training, and the blood or urinary concentrations of the parent medication or its principal urinary metabolite followed over time. The laboratory performing analyses should be appropriately (American Association of Laboratory Accreditation, A2LA) accredited, and have in place a validated quantitative method for the threshold substance at concentrations down to the lowest concentration present in the experimental horses (http://hbpa.org/resources/MedicationPolicy.pdf). 

The data obtained must then be analyzed statistically, and fitted to an established mathematical distribution. One can then use this mathematical distribution to tell horsemen that if they administer the drug following X stipulation doses/days, and stop administration at Y hours prior to post, there will be a Z probability of exceeding the regulatory threshold. One of the things that everybody must understand is that if you administer a medication at any time close to post, there is always a finite mathematical probability of exceeding the threshold; all anybody can do is estimate as accurately as possible the probability of an overage, and make sure that the risk is a risk that the horseman can live with. 

This finite probability of a therapeutic medication overage is most likely the reason that regulatory authorities are almost invariably reluctant to be associated with “withdrawal time” guidelines. While a 1/1000 risk of a “positive” may be an entirely acceptable risk for an individual horseman in a small number of horses, if the authority approves a given “withdrawal time” it assumes responsibility for all 10-20,000 or more samples tested in the jurisdiction, which increases the probability of problems 10-20,000 fold, or more if the authority tests more than 20,000 samples. 

At the personal level, in the current state of play it is extremely difficult to give useful "withdrawal time information" advice. The number of factors which affect the withdrawal time is very large indeed, and in the absence of a defined threshold ("Zero Tolerance" testing) it can be little more that a guessing game. Whenever I get a “withdrawal time” estimate request, I try to make the uncertainties clear, and I always qualify my opinion with the statement that "there are no guarantees in life, and that most certainly includes “withdrawal time” estimates". 

The various factors that can affect "withdrawal times" are set forth in some detail in the National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association's  "Proposed National Policy on Drug Testing and Therapeutic Medication." J Eq Vet Sci 23(1): 4-5, 18-40, 2003. http://hbpa.org/resources/MedicationPolicy.pdf 


11. The Kentucky Medication Rule

Thirty plus years ago, when the long-standing Kentucky medication rule was formulated, (even before I came to town), there were no thresholds or regulatory limits anywhere; indeed there were very few, if any, quantitative methods. Under these circumstances the Kentucky rule was clear, simple, effective and highly practical. You could not run on stimulants, depressants, local anesthetics, tranquilizers or narcotic analgesics, the classic performance altering substances. However, the use of substances that were perceived as therapeutic was permitted, with the goal of protecting the health and welfare of the horse. This Kentucky rule well fitted the regulatory technology then available, and indeed is, I understand, very close to the rule currently obtaining in human athletics. The fundamental rule has been in place for at least 30 years in Kentucky and, to the best of my knowledge, served the horses and horsemen of Kentucky well. 


12. The Proposed Racing Medication Testing Consortium (RMTC) Rule

More recently the proposed National RMTC rule has chosen to approach various jurisdictions relatively liberal use of Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatories, (NSAIs), phenylbutazone and flunixin, on race day rules. In the first place, we should all understand that phenylbutazone and flunixin are basically nothing, more or less, than horse aspirin. Aspirin is very rapidly eliminated by the horse, and is therefore not a particularly useful medication in horses. Phenylbutazone and flunixin are full brothers to aspirin, and produce more or less the same effect. In particular, in our hands phenylbutazone did not affect a horse’s pain threshold, entirely consistent with our understanding of this medication and our every day experience with aspirin. 

The proposed RMTC rule adopts the mid-eighties phenylbutazone threshold of 5ug/ml in blood and adds two extra thresholds, one for flunixin of 20ng/ml and one for ketoprofen of 10ng/ml in blood. As of this writing, California has completed some significant experimental work on flunixin and is apparently in the process of experimentally evaluating the proposed RMTC 20 ng/ml flunixin threshold. 

Such a re-evaluation would not be particularly surprising, because, to my knowledge, there is no definitive published scientific study that approaches addressing the question of a 24-hour threshold of flunixin in the blood of a racing Thoroughbred at the appropriate level of rigor required prior to its introduction as a national rule. 

Finally, as of this writing, the RMTC appears committed to developing regulatory thresholds in plasma for all of the therapeutic medications listed in Table 1., a significant regulatory advance based on recent technological and regulatory developments.


13. Further Reading

1/ www.thomastobin.com 

2/ Thomas Tobin, Drugs and the Performance Horse by Thomas Tobin, 463 pages, Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Illinois, 1981.

3/ Tobin T, Mundy GD, Stanley SD, Sams RA, Crone D (eds): Testing for Therapeutic Medications, Environmental and Dietary Substances in Racing Horses, Proceedings of Workshop, Lexington, KY, 220 pages, 1995. [KY Ag Exp Sta #95-14-058]

4/ The Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) Uniform Classification System for Foreign Substances:   http://www.arci.com/druglisting.pdf

5/ Tobin T, Harkins JD, Sams RA: Testing for therapeutic medications: Analytical/ pharmacological relationships and the need for “limitations” on the sensitivity of testing for certain agents. J Vet Pharm Therap, 22:220-233. 1999. [KY Ag Exp Sta #98-14-134].

6/ Smith R.L “The zero tolerance approach to doping control in horse racing: a fading illusion.” Proceedings of the 13th International Conference of Racing Analysts and Veterinarians (ICRAV) Cambridge, United Kingdom, p 9-14, 2000. 

7/ Stirling K, Bellocq R, and Tobin T: National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, Inc. Proposed National Policy on Drug Testing and Therapeutic Medication. J Eq Vet Sci 23(1): 4-5, 18-40, 2003.  http://hbpa.org/resources/MedicationPolicy.pdf

8/ Neogen ELISA tests: www.neogen.com/forensickits.htm

9/ Tobin T, Harkins JD, VanMeter PW, Fuller TA: The Mare Reproductive Loss Syndrome II: A Toxicokinetic/Clinical Analysis and a Proposed Pathogenesis; Septic Penetrating Setae. Intern. J. Appl. Res. Vet. Med., Vol 2 No 2 P 142 - 158, 2004.www.jarvm.com/articles/Vol2Iss2/TOBINJARVMVol2No2.pdf 

Appendix #1

Association of Racing Commissioners International “Drug Positives”

8/16/2004 Thru 8/16/2005


RCI Drug Postive Rulings From 8/1/2004 Thru 8/1/2005

4 ACEPROMAZINE
1 ACETYLSALICYLIC ACID (ASPIRIN)
10 ALBUTEROL
4 AMINOREX
4 AMPHETAMINE
1 BENZOCAINE
9 BENZOYLECGONINE
1 BETAMETHASONE
1 BOLDENONE
1 BUMETANIDE
1 BUSPIRONE
1 BUTORPHANOL
16 CAFFEINE
3 CAFFEINE; THEOPHYLLINE
1 CAFTHEOBTHEOP
1 CARPROFEN
1 CELECOXIB
3 CIMETIDINE
26 CLENBUTEROL
6 CROMOLYN
1 DANTROLENE
1 DESMETHYLPYRILAMINE
1 DESMETHYLPYRLAMINE
1 DETOMIDINE
45 DEXAMETHASONE
1 DEXTRORPHAN
14 DICLOFENAC
20 DIMETHYLSULFOXIDE
1 DIPHENHYDRAMINE
1 DIPRENOPHINE
3 DORMOSEDAN
2 EPHEDRINE
1 ERGONOVINE
3 EXCESS TCO2
1 FEXOFENADINE
1 FLUMETHASONE
85 FLUNIXIN
4 FLUNIXIN/PHENYLBUTAZONE
1 FLUPHENAZINE
25 FUROSEMIDE
3 GUAIFENESIN
6 GUANABENZ
1 HALOPERIDOL
2 HYDROCORTISONE AND MEVIPICAINE
1 HYDROMORPHONE
1 HYDROXYDANTROLENE

CountOfDRUGNAME

DRUGNAME

2 HYDROXYDETOMIDINE
2 HYDROXYETHYL PROMAZINE SULFOXIDE
1 HYDROXYLIDOCAINE
1 HYDROXYMEPIVACAINE
1 IPRATROPIUM
4 IPRATROPIUM BROMIDE
1 ISOFLUPREDONE
2 ISOXSUPRINE
6 KETOPROFEN
18 KETOROLAC
10 LASIX
2 LIDOCAINE
3 MEPIVACAINE
7 METHAMPHETAMINE
24 METHOCARBAMOL
16 METHYLPREDNISOLONE
2 MORPHINE
9 NAPROXEN
1 NAPROXEN POSITIVE
2 NAPROXENTHE
1 NAQUASONE
1 NORPSEUDOEPHEDRINE DESMETHYLPYRILAMINE
1 O-DESMETHYLPYRILAMINE AND NORPSEUDOEPHEDRINE
2 PENTAZOCINE
2 PENTOXYFYLLINE
1 PERINDOPRIL
1 PHENYLBUTAZONE
4 PHENYOXYPHEN
1 PIRBUTEROL
3 POLYETHYLENEGLYCOL
15 PROCAINE
2 PROPANTHELINE
1 PROPRANOLOL
1 PSEUDOEPHEDRINE
1 PSEUDOEPHEDRINE And NORPSEUDOEPHEDRINE
1 PSEUDOEPHEDRINE AND NORPSEUDOEPHEDRINE AND DESMETHYLPYRILAMI
2 PYRILAMINE
8 RANITIDINE
1 SALICYLIC ACID
4 SALIX
1 TERBUTALINE POSTV
5 THEOPHYLLINE
47 TOTAL CARBON DIOXIDE
3 TRIAMCINOLONE
4 TRICHLORMETHIAZIDE
4 TRIMETHOPRIM
4 TRIPELENNAMINE
23 UNKNOWN
1 VENTIPULMIN SYRUP






Appendix #2

DETAILS OF THE FIELD AND MEDICATION REGULATION

National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, Inc. Proposed National Policy on Drug Testing and Therapeutic Medication. J Eq Vet Sci 23(1): 4-5, 18-40, 2003. http://hbpa.org/resources/MedicationPolicy.pdf 

Published as Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station Article #_____ with the approval of the Dean and Director, College of Agriculture and the Kentucky Agriculture Experiment Station.

Publication #359 From the Equine Pharmacology, Therapeutics and Toxicology Program of the Maxwell H. Gluck Equine Research Center, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40546-0099.

Supported by the National, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Charles Town WV, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tampa Bay Downs, Texas, Washington State, West Virginia, Ontario, and Canada Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Associations.