The Cross Pollination of Human and Vet Meds: a saga

[hey101]

About 15 years ago, I started a thread where I did an empirical testing on omeprazole enteric coated pellets from a company called abler. Became quite extensive and I hoped it helped Horse owners with alternative solutions to treat their ulcer Horses.

Disclaimer I’ve spent my career in pharmaceutical manufacturing and was at one point the primary technical support for Prilosec, which is omeprazole.

I’ve continued to utilize human and animal health medicines across the spectrum of my own life.

About eight years ago, I burned my lip quite severely on a very hot cup of coffee at a gas station. Got infected and finally went to the doctor and got prescribed SMZ‘s. I laughed when I got the prescription because I had a bottle of about 500 tablets in my barn.For about a year that infection kept coming back and I knew it when my lip would start to tingle and then the infection would develop. Instead of going through the hassle of a doctor appointment sitting and waiting and then going and waiting at the pharmacy I just trotted out to the barn. Get my bottle of SMZs and self treat for 10 days

A few years ago, we were visiting my parents and hub had some back issues ( he is a farrier) and mentioned it to my mother. She brought out a topical. Voltaren. I looked at the information and it was basically surpass. Diclofenac same strength prescribed to Horses for $80 a tube. I ordered three tubes that day on Amazon for about $30.

Most recently, my husband had a pretty severe situation in which he was in the ER twice we were circling around diagnoses of hepatitis, ulcers, acute pancreatitis,. After about four weeks of heavy diagnostics and no improvement, his PCP tossed out the word “parasitic”. Hub told me this offhand, and I thought to myself.”huh”. So I calculated the human dosage for ivermectin, which is a basically one fingertips worth of a horse meds y’all have in your barn. Within one day, he was improving and has continued to improve.

My message here is this: Horse people are pretty savvy on meds and most human and animal medication has been crossed developed. Do your research.

[2DogsFarm]

With nowhere near your expertise, I LOL’d when my Ortho Doc ordered diclofenac pills for my arthritic knees.
Told him I’d rather get the topical & that had been in use for horses as Surpass since the 80’s.
Same for robaxin/methocarbamol among other “horse drugs”.

[hey101]

Yes, methocarbamol is another one. I mentioned somewhat of the same as I typed out above recently to a friend of mine who has back pain and I told her I’d be happy to give her some of the tablets I have in my barn.

In my previous life, I also used to support Flexeril and I have no idea what its current status is, but I had active tablets sitting in bags under my desk also a muscle relaxant (cyclobenzaprine) this was in the early 00’s

[2DogsFarm]

There was another long ago… so long I’ve forgotten why my TB was prescribed it, IIRC it was for circulation.
I had to grind 20 or so tabs in a coffee grinder.

[cayuse]

I’m on robaxin. I also took cyproheptadine for migraines at the same time my horse was on it for headshaking syndrome. Back in the day, WAY far back in the day, my grandmother was on bute for her arthritis, she developed some sort of anemia from it (not from a gastric bleed but bone marrow dysfunction or something) and was in the hospital for weeks.

[hey101]

Phenylbutazone is one of the meds that is not safe to cross from human to animals.
The liver toxicity of bute has been well established, and it was pulled from the market decades ago.

[cayuse]

Yes, this was in the 60’s when there wasn’t many RA options. She was lucky she lived, she was that sick.

[NaturallyHappy]

My mom also took it. It would have been about 60 years ago…

[hey101]

To alleviate any concerns about cowboy medication and recommendations here, not that anyone is going to take Internet advisement from a Rando meaning me, but ivermectin has a long profile in human health. Merck has donated ivermectin tablets for decades to treat river blindness in Africa.

[nutmeg]

FASCINATING. I am on iron supplements today for anemia of unknown origin. Back in the day we thought nothing of downing a sliver of bute when your foot was fractured but Devon was next week. The official cure for a hangover was a cc of banamine in orange juice. The vet advised us that if we MUST take SMZs, to drink a sh!t ton of water along with it.
I always had my doubts about Surpass since it was FEI legal for so long, but now I hear people who take it orally vouching for it. I just assumed the horse benefitted from the 10 minutes of massaging you were supposed to do while applying it

[chestnutmarebeware]

I can personally attest that SMZs at one capsule per 100# (just like for my horses) work great when I need an antibiotic in a pinch (at a waaaaaay lower price!).

[Texarkana]

For a few years, I had a career in (human) pediatric cardiac surgery. I got the job solely because of my veterinary experience.

It really wasn’t much different.

[enjoytheride]

Voltaren has been around for a long time before it was renamed as Surpass, I used to order it from Canada for both people and horses until the US government decided having access to cheap medicine available over the counter in other countries was costing pharmaceutical companies money.

Since conspiracy theorists on the internet say Ivermectin can cure anything from parasites, to Covid to Cancer and there are lots of people randomly taking it without asking for medical advise.

I recently came across a post of someone’s parent with stage 4 cancer in the brain. They were advised by people with a Google MD to take Ivermectin along with fenbendazole, and cut out carbs and mushrooms.

[Indy]

I recently was having a lot of knee pain. The ortho started telling me about Voltaren gel and I interrupted him with “oh yeah, I have a bunch of that, we use it on the horses” but I refrained from telling him that I used to buy it from the vet.

I use ichthammol to draw out splinters from all the humans in the family. Definitely learned about that from the barn.

[cayuse]

Surpass is basically the same thing as Voltaran ointment, a different strength I think along with a different carrier. Doctor told me to use it on my TMJ arthritis and it works!
Back when I was a nurse SMZ’s were used a lot for UTI’s and other stuff. I had to have the person I was working with dispense it as I’m super allergic to it.

[Simkie]

I really prefer using surpass on myself over voltaren gel, but gawd it’s so expensive. Voltaren gel doesn’t work very well on horses…something about the carrier and it’s (in)ability to penetrate horse skin.

SMZ is just Bactrim DS.

Tylenol and Aleve both carry over to horses now.

Zyrtec, too! Can’t forget Nexium.

And I’ve certainly gotten…looks…filling my horse’s gabapentin script at the people pharmacy.

[NaturallyHappy]

And…Steglatro. The pharmacist was SO nice and recommended. Good RX.

[Indy]

@Simkie

Zyrtec, too!

Oh lord how could I forget the Zyrtec? It shows up at my house on auto-delivery every month from Amazon. All three humans in the family and the pony are on it for allergies. When the humans start to run low, I take a fist-full from the pony’s bottle and add it to the human bottles.

[Scribbler]

I’ve used the McTarnahans Blue Lotion with methyl salicylate on my back. It does have a quick analgesic effect.

[Kimstar]

You can get Voltaren double strength here in Canada. I don’t know if it’s available in the US.
The sport medicine vets up here tell you to just go buy Voltaren rather than prescribe Surpass.