For those of you that have healed a horse with glandular ulcers and kept them away:
Omeprazole is the current standard for glandular ulcers. That doesn’t mean it always works, as more recent studies have found that horses actually have fairly variable response to doses
There’s also a newer injectable.
What you do as prevention largely depends on why they existed, from stress of showing, to a high starch diet, to not enough turnout, to stressful turnout buddies, to injury/stall rest/etc
Oh boy…I could write you a novel on this…
I have treated with both misoprostol and omeprozole. I have done courses of straight misprostol, some combined with ompeprozole. I have treated this horse SEVERAL times.
Ended up going to an internist and I will always use this protocol for ulcers moving forward:
Full tube of Omeprozole fasted int he AM
3x sucrelafate
treat for 30 days
My horse scoped clean after 30 days using the above.
Then Outlast and slow feeder for maintenance.
The treatment I was prescribed for glandular ulcers was similar to nwjumper’s.
Omeprazole and sucralfate - scoped clean after about 5 weeks. Using outlast and alfalfa for support now. My vet also suggested Seabuck 7 but I never tried it.
I’d tried a number of ulcer supplements (ReLyneGI, Ulceraser, UGard) and I don’t know how much any of them helped. Horse had been on Ulceraser for a couple of years before the major flare-up that resulted in scoping and treatment.
How are you timing the meds? The omeprazole and sucralfate aren’t typically used together (in the same feeding/dosing), so I’m curious how you managed to space those out and still get it all in the horse.
It’s a dance.
6 am- omeprozole
7 am- feed and sucralfate
4 pm- sucralfate
9 pm - sucralfate
Not perfect spacing but it’s what I could get done at boarding barn
I self-diagnosed my gelding with glandular ulcers after finally seeing if his ever-increasing anxious/spooky behavior might subside if I gave him some full tubes of Ulcergard (omeprazole). Yeah. He became a different horse nearly overnight. So, I bit the bullet and bought 28 tubes to accompany the ones I already had. I gave him a full tube for 28 days, then half a tube for eight days, and a quarter of a tube for four days. Then stopped and prayed. He was good as gold by the time we were through the treatment, and he has stayed good. He can still get a little anxious about things, but NOTHING like he was. To give you an idea: before being treated for the ulcers, he would run in his field, stand in the back corner blowing like a dragon, absolutely out of his mind crazy, trembling, just…terrified…if there was heavy equipment working anywhere on the farm where we board. Heck, even the zero turn lawnmower was causing him issues, and he’s been around those since he was a baby (he’s 15 now). He was just a hot mess.
Today, I rode him while two HUGE excavators were doing major, loud work in sight of his pasture (and where we were riding). Now, we didn’t go close to them, and he was definitely aware of them and maybe slightly “sharper” than he usually is when all is quiet, but he wasn’t having a nervous breakdown over it. I would never have dreamed of trying to ride him with that much commotion going on before. Not to mention there was an almost nonstop procession of huge dump trucks coming in and out past us (getting filled up with the stuff the excavators were tearing down/cleaning out).
He got a little panicked one time after I brought him back to untack because one of the pieces of machinery had the back-up “beep beep beep” going and it was echoing off of a building on the other side of us and I think he was confused about where exactly the thing was (closer than he was comfy with). I could see his heart beating he was so worried. But I’ve learned to listen to him and let him know I’m going to keep him safe, so we untied and went where he felt more comfortable.
But I digress. The point is, Ulcergard (which is available OTC and is the same as the prescription Gastrogard) got my boy back to normal. I also have removed all soy from his diet. He gets no corn or oats either. He gets lots of hay, 24/7 turnout (grass all but gone now in small 1+ acre pasture he shares with BFF), and his “feed” is soaked beet pulp, TC Gold balancer, some supplements, and chopped alfalfa mixed in. I also feed him about 6 or so Outlast cookies every day.
I’m actually toying with giving him some Ulcergard over the next week or so while this work is being done on the farm just to make sure he doesn’t get something brewing again. Bless him. He is a worry wart.
So you didn’t do Sucralfate along with the Ulcerguard?
How do you know his ulcers were glandular rather than the far more typical squamous?
Squamous ulcers generally respond really well to omeprazole, and that’s often the only drug that’s needed. Glandular ulcers don’t respond in the same way, and additional meds are often required.
Here’s an article about the difference. I don’t think there’s any way to “self” diagnose glandular ulcers, unless you’re going off a lack of response to omeprazole, but that’s not what you’re describing?
(Maybe you mean you self diagnosed your horse with gastric ulcers? Which would be a generic term, but likely squamous with that nice response to omeprazole.)
https://www.bwequinevets.co.uk/article/2/equine-gastric-ulcers-explained-specialist/
My horse’s glandular ulcer was diagnosed via scope while he was admitted for a severe enteritis-based colic. He had one big, nasty looking glandular lesion. The vet consulted with an internist because we wanted to know which medications would work best and they recommended omeprazole and sucralfate in his case (we had been considering misoprostol but the internist didn’t recommend it for him).
@Pippigirl - I’ve never been in a situation that allowed the gold standard of dosing (empty stomach, separation between meds, every 3-4 hours, etc). When I have to do omeprazole and sucralfate in the same time period I just do the best I can. So I’ll give the omeprazole as soon as I arrive at the barn and then wait at least 30-45 minutes or longer while I do other things before giving sucralfate. If you give sucralfate first I think you have to wait longer (preferably a couple of hours) before giving omeprazole because it can interfer with the absorption of other medications.
Ah, sorry. Yeah, you’re right. I meant gastric ulcers.
I don’t know what kind they were. Probably squamous since they definitely responded to omeprazole very well.
Sorry about that.
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