Cushing's PPD, would you put this horse on pergolide?

[RedHorses]

I have a horse with PPID.

​​A couple​​ of years ago I went to an information night my vet clinic hosted. They had one of Ingelheim Boerhinger’s vets come and talk about Cushings. At one point he said if it looks like duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck treat it like a duck. There has been a lot of research into PPID in the last ten years and they do get “ducks” that respond favourably to Prascend despite ngeative results on the various tests for PPID.

Maybe it was more than two years. At any rate, remember that there was no test at one time. Vets had to go on symptoms alone when deciding to prescribe Pergolide or not. Your horse sounds like he’d be on Pergolide in pre test days.

[yaya]

At a seminar given by one of the vets who helped get Prascend approved for horses, I asked if there was any problem with giving it to a horse without testing, but showing signs (at the time, all my 23-year-old horse had was the shaggy coat that would not shed in summer). He said there weren’t any problems with it, to give it for several months and look for improvement. My guy is now 25, and has had a sleeker coat for the last two years. (Had to go through shedding season before the long stuff came out.)

Have had 3 over-20s on it with no testing, just treating symptoms (2 with shaggy coats, one with ouchy feet). They all improved.

[Sansena]

Thank you so much. This has all been very helpful. I very much appreciate it!

[MyKindaFlower]

OP, if you want to give Chasteberry a try, I’ve had good luck with Su-Per Chasteberry liquid from Gateway for my pre-PPID, IR, PPSM drafty cross. He gets a 2 ounce shot glass per day of the stuff in his morning grain. I can’t speak to the Smartpak pellets, they may be excellent but I haven’t tried them. I did try human gel caps w/ Chasteberry powder but then I read an article somewhere that mentioned that the liquid versions may be more bioavailable. I worked with my Vet and looked at the Evitex label to determine dose. Here’s the link to what I use in case you want to take a look.

https://www.su-perstore.com/m7/sfechaste--su-per-chasteberry-liquid.html

Oh, you might also want to talk to the Resvantage folks. I give Resvantage to my guy as well and the two combined have really worked well for him. My vet wants to hold off on Prascend for as long as we can for my big guy but he also has perfect feet so we have that going for us.

My mare is on Prascend and took a long time to adjust to it. We have settled on a 1/2 pill every other day and will test her ACTH levels this fall to decide if we want to adjust that for the winter. She’s an odd one, her ACTH was at 55 this spring with no symptoms of PPID. To make things a bit more unusual, her insulin was below normal which ruled out using Chasteberry because that can lower insulin levels and her’s are already lower than we’d like. I may consider switching to pergolide for her if we have to look at raising her Prascend dose. She acted as if she were sedated when we tried a higher dose earlier this year.