I would love to hear from those of you who have had your horse’s joints injected with polyacrylamide. What is your experience?
We did Noltrex injections on my gelding about 6 months ago and I am very impressed. He tore his meniscus 3 years ago and has good periods and bad periods. With the Noltrex he is moving around his paddock a lot more and getting up and down better than he has in years. It’s more expensive than “regular” joint injections but reading the studies it is supposed to continue to provide improvement for up to 6 months (I think that’s the cut-off) and then last up to two years. We did two doses/vials on the inside of the stifle and one on the outside. He is still retired but looks a lot more stable now 
The only other changes I have made were that I switched to acetyl-d glucosamine injections over pentosan and started giving him the Platinum Performance boswellia supplement. It seems unlikely that either of those could be helping that much considering everything else I’ve tried in the past. When the vet came out for vaccinations this spring it was the first time in 3 years we didn’t also do something to his stifle.
The other thing that really helped in the past was shockwave. We did that about two years in and it seemed to have permanently resolved the constant joint swelling.
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Mine got Noltrex injected into a hind ankle that is pre-arthritic (some inflammation, but nothing showing on x-ray yet). I did the proper rehab protocol (it’s about a month to get back into full work) - I decided because of this to inject in the winter.
I got about 15 months out of that injection - previously I had been using HA/cortisone and getting between 3-6 months in between. My vet and I were very pleased with the results. I will be redoing the Noltrex this winter, but in the meantime had the HA done as it’s a bad time of year to do the rehab!
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If you don’t mind me asking, how much did the Noltrex run? I’ve just started hearing about this and it isn’t something my vet has mentioned yet, but I’d be interested to try it on my horse. I just did a course of IRAP on him that I won’t be redoing because of cost, but would consider this as an alternative (he’s not a good candidate for traditional steroid injections).
I looked at my invoice - in 2018 it was $375 per dose in Canada (just the Noltrex, not including injecting or call fee). I had originally looked into Noltrex in 2017 and if I recall correctly it was about $350 US a dose at that time. By 2018 we had a Canadian distributor so it was better-priced than bringing it up from the US and paying exchange.
