Carprofen For Humans

Generics advancing on lucrative pet drug market

PORTLAND, Maine — When Samantha Lowe’s 12-year-old Labrador retriever needed anti-inflammatories to ease her arthritis, she found herself facing the same question humans face when it comes to prescriptions: name-brand drug or generic?

She did the same thing many people do: She chose the generic version to save money.

“If a generic works as well as the real thing, I’m all for saving money,” said Lowe, whose family in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, includes two other dogs and a cat, in addition to her husband and two children.

As patents expire for branded pet drugs, more generics are finding their way into veterinarian’s offices, where they offer the potential of big savings for owners of dogs, cats and other pets. In a nation where people have more than 86 million cats and 78 million dogs as pets, the savings are substantial.

An estimated 10 percent of animal health drugs are now generic varieties, up from an estimated 5 percent five years ago, and many believe generics will account for half of all pet medications within a decade, said Robert Fountain II, president of Fountain Agricounsel LLC, an animal health consulting company in Connecticut.

“We’ve been saying that this is the dawn of the bull market for generic animal health drugs,” he said.

Veterinarians can now prescribe any of four types of drugs for animals in need of medication — human-approved branded and generic drugs, or pet-approved branded and generics.

While the animal market is a fraction of what is spent on prescriptions for people, it’s still a big-money industry. In 2009, $6.4 billion was spent in the U.S. on animal medicine, with 60 percent of that — $3.8 billion — spent on companion animals and the other 40 percent on food animals, such as cattle, pigs and chickens, according to the Animal Health Institute, a trade group in Washington, D.C.

The pet prescription market for the most part has been dominated by large, well-known companies such as Pfizer and Merck, which owns the Intervet Schering-Plough animal health business. But a number of other companies are now developing generic pet drugs as the opportunity arises.

Putney Inc. is one of those companies. Started five years ago in Portland it launched its first product — carprofen, a generic version of Rimadyl, a painkiller marketed by Pfizer’s animal health division— in 2009. Its second product, a generic ketamine used for anesthesia and sedation, came out last year.

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Vetprofen (carprofen) is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) of the propionic acid class that includes ibuprofen, naproxen, and ketoprofen. Carprofen is the nonproprietary designation for a substituted carbazole, 6-chloro-&945;-methyl-9H-carbazole-2-acetic acid. The empirical formula is C

carprofen 10Medi-Vet Animal Health,Vetprofen should not be used in dogs exhibiting previous hypersensitivity to carprofen.

Keep out of reach of children. Not for human use. Consult a physician in cases of accidental ingestion by humans. For use in dogs only. Do not use in cats.

As a class, cyclooxygenase inhibitory NSAIDs may be associated with gastrointestinal top 100 song , renal and hepatic toxicity. Effects may result from decreased prostaglandin production and inhibition of the enzyme cyclooxygenase which is responsible for the formation of prostaglandins from arachidonic acid.

When NSAIDs inhibit prostaglandins that cause inflammation they may also inhibit those prostaglandins which maintain normal homeostatic function. These anti-prostaglandin effects may result in clinically significant disease in patients with underlying or pre-existing disease more often than in healthy patients.

NSAID therapy could unmask occult disease which has previously been undiagnosed due to the absence of apparent clinical signs. Patients with underlying renal disease for example, may experience exacerbation or decompensation of their renal disease while on NSAID therapy.

The use of parenteral fluids during surgery should be considered to reduce the potential risk of renal complications when using NSAIDs perioperatively.

Always provide Client Information Sheet with prescription. The recommended dosage for oral administration to dogs is 2 mg/lb (4.4 mg/kg) of body weight daily. The total daily dose may be administered as 2 mg/lb of body weight once daily or divided and administered as 1 mg/lb (2.2 mg/kg) twice daily. For the control of postoperative pain, administer approximately 2 hours before the procedure. Caplets are scored and dosage should be calculated in half-caplet increments.

Confirmation of the effectiveness of carprofen for the relief of pain and inflammation associated with osteoarthritis, and for the control of postoperative pain associated with soft tissue and orthopedic surgeries was demonstrated in 5 placebo-controlled, masked studies examining the anti-inflammatocarprofen 100 mgry and analgesic effectiveness of carprofen caplets in various breeds of dogs.

Anti-inflammatory and anti-rheumatic drugs

Veterinary pharmacology and therapeutics

Chemical abstracts

Small animal clinical pharmacology

Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics