Tell me your experiences with Tildren or Osphos...

[YellowPonyEventer]

I have a 15 yo mare who was just diagnosed (by 2 different vets - my regular vet and also by a lameness expert) with arthritis in her neck, back, and hocks (and those were just the places we actually took radiographs). She also has some hip pain on both sides, the lameness vet believes it all to be a product of the neck arthritis.

We injected her hocks before we discovered her neck, and it helped for a couple days and then she regressed. No recognizable lameness other than she is more short strided/doesn’t want to track up and she is more resistant in the bridle than usual too (we do Eventing, at a low level, BN, though lately we’ve just been focused on dressage - again low level, Training tests).

Part of lameness vet’s recommendations were to inject the neck (which we just did over the weekend), and then either do Tildren or Osphos as well. Tildren is on back order til who knows when so we’re going to do Osphos. What are others’ experiences with horses with arthritis in the neck and how did Osphos or Tildren help your horse (or did it do nothing)?

The lameness vet’s other recommendations were shock wave (we’ve done 1 treatment on her back with no improvement and it’s $250 a pop so I’m not going to spend $ on it at this point), and injecting the hips (we decided to inject the neck first and see if that helps the rest of her body soreness, lameness vet said it may). He also recommended Adequan, but my regular vet and I discussed and with the changes that are already there for her, it may not be worth doing at this point so that one is on hold for now.

Basically if the osphos and neck injections don’t improve her, then I may be looking at the choice of either having her just as my trail horse (which the vets both said would be fine for her), or retiring her. She has no neurological signs at this point.

[RJC]

My mare has confirmed very bad hock arthritis (injections no longer had any effect) and suspected mild spine/neck issues. Vet wanted to try Osphos, which was administered in mid-November. I was told it would take 6 weeks to see full results. She started acting happier after 4 weeks, and at 6 weeks was moving much better and had lost the short stridedness and was steadier in the bridle (your horse sounds similar behaviorally).

My only complaint with Osphos is that they need to be off Previcox for a couple weeks before and at least a week after being treated to prevent kidney damage, which was not fun for my girl. But she’s happy now, so I guess it was worth it. The Osphos made her feel good enough that we can put on some muscle with correct work to support her spine. We plan to repeat treatment in April/May.

And really, she’s moving better than she has in years right now. I’d say I’m an Osphos fan, though like anything else, it won’t help every horse.

[YellowPonyEventer]

Thanks RJC! And good to know about the Previcox, because my mare is on Equioxx currently (though it’s not really helping her so I don’t think it’ll matter if I take her off of it). We did pull blood and check her kidney levels to make sure she didn’t have any pre-existing kidney conditions and her kidney levels look good thankfully. So glad to hear about your mare

[Danier]

I tried Osphos for hock arthritis and saw no improvement. Gave it the six weeks, then went ahead with regular injection, which showed prompt improvement.
So I’m not sold on it. I am glad I tried though (aside from the $600 it cost me) because I can say I tried everything.

[tazycat]

Isn’t she the horse you have posted videos of in the past?? If thats the same horse what a shame. She’s is a beautiful mare

[TWH_Girl]

I’m doing hock injections with an Osphos injection at the same time on my 14 yr old. Osphos is to help address the hock pain and some SI pain. I haven’t used it yet but like most treatments, it’s hit or miss. Depends on the condition and the horse. In your case, it does certainly seem appropriate and worth trying.

I had no idea about being off Equioxx before hand as well. I assume that’s due to the colic risk involved?

[horsepoor]

My gelding with neck arthritis responded very well to neck injections about 3 years ago. He did have some mild neuro symptoms as well as being grumpy under saddle – made him a happy guy and while the neuro symptoms still were visible at times, he wasn’t as bad. I got maybe a year out of those injections before things got bad again. We tried osphos because he is IR/EMS and we have to be careful about steroid injections. For him, didn’t do a thing. Since then, we gambled and did neck injections again (he’s been metabolically stable and regular blood work was good so we opted to try to help him as he’s miserable). I’ve seen mild improvement – not enough to make him rideable, but I didn’t expect that at this point.

I’ve heard of good results with osphos but having used it on two horses (one above and another with a bad bone bruise and bone loss in a foot), I’ve not had any remarkable improvement. Wouldn’t stop me from using it again if recommended but would have me looking at other options first.

[YellowPonyEventer]

Danier, if you ever want to try it again, I found it on Valley Vet for less than $300!

tazycat, yes it is the same horse, and thank you!

TWH girl, yes I believe it is due to that risk.

horsepoor, hopefully she responds well to the injections too! It’s really hard to gauge the severity of my mare’s arthritic changes because I’ve had 3 different vets look at her radiographs now and all three have varying opinions about how bad it is. All I know is that if I’m going to continue to show her, she needs to be happy in her job or there’s just no point. She can just be my trail pony worst case, they said she’d have absolutely no issues with that at least. I rode her for the first time since the injections last night, but I can only walk/trot in straight lines this week so I just hacked her around. She felt good but I didn’t push anything yet of course. We’ll see how she is next week when we can return to some regular work slowly.

[Buglet]

I had excellent results with Tildren. Horse was visibly sore prior to treatment. He was 100% sound for a year without any other meds/treatments.

[YellowPonyEventer]

Buglet, that’s great to hear! I really wanted to try Tildren, but the companies who own it are switching so it’s in limbo with no ETA on when it’ll be available again (or what the price will be when it’s back on the market).

[YellowPonyEventer]

And since someone mentioned videos, this is a recent video of how she had been moving, prior to injections or finding any of this stuff out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_Dm3pisHSE&t=118s

[YellowPonyEventer]

Here is her 1 year ago…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7OhF6jH9Do

[YellowPonyEventer]

And this was her back in 2014…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yJ_ak_hvVY

[IPEsq]

For my horse with neck arthritis, it has never been suggested or recommended to do Tildren/Osphos. We did a regional (distal limb) perfusion for his recent PO. I was not interested in doing the systemic unless absolutely necessary due to possible complications. So far, injections appear to be helping, but with some attitude lately, the jury is still out on how well the 2nd round is really helping.

He’s also got a tendency to be chronically sore in the lower back/croup/hips. The first time around, injecting the neck got us where I could address the other through fitness. Still struggling with that this time due to the setback from the PO, some belly discomfort, and some 6-yo 'tude. However, the vets have discussed things like shockwave on his back, SI injections, mesotherapy, etc. Because he didn’t need that ultimately after the first round of injections, we still haven’t done it. And at this point, before taking guesses of that nature, the vets would want him to have a bone scan, thinking maybe it’s not the hind end at all, or maybe it is.

Long story short is that I would wait to throw a lot more at him until the neck injections have a chance to work and you can see what you can do fitness-wise after that. It takes at least 2 weeks to start noticing any change, and for my horse, it can take a good 4 weeks (maybe even 6) before we’ve got the full effect of the injections. I am a believer that Adequan can help prolong the injections you’ve done and help keep the arthritis from getting worse. So, if you want to do something in the shorter term, do a loading dose of Adequan.

Otherwise, wait a month or two. I personally don’t think that Osphos/Tildren would be worth it at this point, and it’s not cheap and has risks.

[IPEsq]

Sorry, might not have been clear that we did regional perfusion of Tildren in November for the PO. And he had had his second round of neck injections in September. Although in hindsight, his behavior may have been more due to foot than neck at that time, but he wouldn’t limp so we didn’t know. He still had noticeable effusion in the neck so I don’t regret treating that even if his primary complaint had been foot.

[YellowPonyEventer]

Thanks IPEsq…thankfully I have some connections and can get osphos for less than $200, so it’s not too bad of an option for me financially, and far cheaper than shock wave, mesotherapy, or another set of joint injections for her hips, for example. So I’ll see how that goes and let you all know. I am still interested in how much the neck injections help and like you mentioned, I think once we get the neck comfortable I can address her other low grade back/SI/hip soreness with fitness. She’s out of shape (and slightly overweight) at the moment from not being worked much while I tried to do all the diagnostics to get this figured out. She has always dealt with some level of back soreness that we tried, and failed, to get to the bottom of for years, but it’s just gotten worse lately which is what led to the multiple radiographs, flexions, lameness exams, etc.

Unfortunately/fortunately, being a stocky QH/Paint, she can exist on AIR lol…she only gets 1lb of a ration balancer daily and she gets free choice Tifton/Coastal hay but eats it out of a 3/4" hole slow feeder so she can’t just hoover it all up! She goes out with her herd every evening around 5 or 6pm and comes back in around 7 or 8am the next morning, so she’s getting plenty of turnout. Not much grass out there right now, but they have round bales of Tifton out there (also in a big slow feeder round bale net).

[IPEsq]

Another reason to consider waiting before doing Osphos is that if you do too much at once, if there’s improvement, you don’t really know which one did the trick or if you really needed to do both.

So, give her a week totally off from the neck injections. You can do light exercise week 2 (no real contact, no small circles). Then give it at least another 2-4 weeks to see if you notice anything different in her movement behind. I would personally then give it longer than that to put her in a fitness program. Of course, she may experience some soreness just from the fitness program. I’m a fan of massage and acupuncture for that. Acupuncture also helps with the neck pain. And now would not be a bad time to do Adequan.

If you think she’s still not right after giving the injections a real chance to work, then do the Osphos if that’s what you want to do.

[YellowPonyEventer]

I’ll have to check with my vet because I already ordered the osphos…but if it keeps for a bit I can always wait a few weeks before we try it out.

[IPEsq]

I’m pretty sure it keeps in the fridge.

[Peggy]

I had a horse with pedal osteitis, neck arthritis, and some sort of stifle issue.

We did IV Tildren for the PO before we knew about the neck (or the stifle issue had surfaced). Horse became sound, but after several months under saddle he wasn’t. That’s when we found the neck and the stifle, which we treated. So it’s hard to tell if the Tildren helped his neck at all, but it wasn’t a lasting effect.

Horse ultimately went lame again, was treated with a regional perfusion of Tildren (twice) and became sound. Until he wasn’t. Among the treatments we tried was another regional perfusion of the Tildren.

In the end nothing worked, the horse was miserable and definitely compromised neurologically, and I euthanized him last March shortly after his 7th birthday.

I suppose it’s feasible that the Tildren did something to his neck that contributed to his soundness, but I doubt it and it certainly didn’t last long.