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OME OF the recent penalties meted out for demorphin positives are a step in the right direction, as are movements in some racing jurisdictions to significantly increase withdrawal times for clenbuterol, a bronchodilator with steroidal-like properties. “I’d like to see them do away with clenbuterol before Lasix,” Bob Baffert once told me. Lasix, or Salix as it’s now sold, is furosemide, a legal drug in horseracing. But it’s under fire, too. Opponents, spearheaded by the Jockey Club and cheer-led by the New York Times, almost zealously trumpet furosemide as a performance-enhancing drug (PED) and attribute quite a bit of equine malaise to its use. But just as vehemently, trainers – from Baffert in California to Barclay Tagg in New York, to name two of many – insist that furosemide is a valuable therapeutic medication that helps to control exerciseinduced pulmonary hemorrhage (EIPH), or bleeding, and shouldn’t be phased out. Now, furosemide does appear to help reduce the severity of EIPH, and even a scientific study sponsored in part by the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation (Hinchcliff, Morley, and Guthrie) says that this is so. But it’s obvious that a drug that was once dispensed sparingly and with strict racing commission oversight to help bleeders when first introduced in the early 1970s is now prescribed like Viagra or Cialis on the internet, to anyone needing it or not. It’s a fuster cluck, for sure. Reform of furosemide usage is clearly needed, at minimum in the way it is prescribed willy-nilly. Despite its efficacy, it has side effects, primarily because it’s a loop diuretic that causes dehydration. And that leads to electrolyte imbalances, which have to be treated with other medications – a nasty drug loop. Furosemide’s side effects, however, are being exaggerated by those who’d like to see it banned, with many who know better staying silent while lies are propagated,
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No lie, no link (yet) between Lasix and breakdowns If I were put before a senate committee and asked if I’m in favor of medication reform at racetracks, the answer would be “Yes.” No lie. And I’d add that I would favor stiffer sanctions for Class 1 drug violators, too. and others actively participating in the fudging. Reform minded as I am, I nearly fell off my chair when Dr. Sheila Lyons, an equine veterinarian, testified on July 12 before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, under the topic of “Lasix Drug Use in Race Horses,” with one heck of a whopper. She said: “My own review of peerreviewed publications revealed over two hundred scientific papers that suggest a link between Lasix use and increased risk of fracture.” Dr. Lyons, who got a well-timed publicity boost with some “expert” quotes in a July 11 Times story about I’ll Have Another’s “History of Ailments,” flat out misled the senate committee, at best. You see, there are scientific papers that link Lasix to fractures, such as “Fracture Risk in Patients Treated with Loop Diuretics,” a 2006 paper by three researchers
“Dr. Lyons, in order to convince the lawmakers, left out of her testimony that the scientific papers she referenced didn’t involve equines at all”
at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark. But they are mostly about elderly humans and Lasix. The Danish study, for example, found a link in patients aged 40 or more who’d used Lasix for at least five years. Dr. Lyons, in order to convince the lawmakers, left out of her testimony that the scientific papers she referenced didn’t involve equines at all. In fact, no scientific study exists at present that links furosemide use in equines to fractures. But this didn’t stop Times writer Joe Drape from tweeting on July 12 after Dr. Lyons had testified that “Lyons was (sic) star” of the proceedings. In their newspaper coverage of the event the next day, Drape and co-writer Walt Bogdanich gave Lyons more props, but they curiously left out her tie-in of Lasix to fractures. Perhaps the Times had fact checked Dr. Lyons’s assertions? Whatever the case, Dr. Lyons and her fan, Drape, took a hit on this supposed equine link between Lasix and breakdowns with the recent release of the “New York Task Force on Racehorse Health and Safety,” which addressed the 21 equine fatalities at the Aqueduct fall/winter meet. In part, the report said, “The Task Force was specifically asked to look at whether the use of furosemide was a possible contributing factor in the fatalities that are the subject of this investigation...” It concluded: “All of the fatally injured horses were treated with furosemide on race day. One hundred fifty three of the 159 uninjured horses in those same races received furosemide. There was no statistically significant difference between the proportion of injured horses that received furosemide (21/21; 100%) and the proportion of the uninjured horses that received furosemide (148/153; 97%), using Fisher’s Exact Test (P=1.000).” Perhaps a link will be established in a future study between furosemide and fractures in equines. But for now, what’s obvious from these numbers is that too many horses are racing on furosemide. No lie. n