What Does the Science Say?
The point I'm trying to make here is that this text is small, boring, and extensive. Nobody shopping around online is going to take the time to sit and read through all of that and try to decode their language.
Now, let's zoom in a bit...
Do you see it yet?
"ANIMAL SAFETY STUDIES UTILIZING LEGEND MULTI DOSE INJECTABLE SOLUTION WERE NOT PERFORMED"
Of course, now that I have zoomed in 100x and cut it and pasted it in front of your eyes, it's impossible to unsee. They never even conducted the studies to see if this product is safe to use on horses!
How can they get away with this? Because it's not as if they didn't provide you with this information, they just made it really hard to find. This is one example of the issues that we get in tandem with relaxing the laws of pharmaceutical advertising.
Now, I'm assuming since this product has been on the market for several years and there aren't any horses dying that it must be safe to some degree, but what about possible underlying issues? We'll look at that next.
The Science Behind Joint Injections:
Some research conducted by Lankenin et al. (2004) found that only 38% of any claims made in ads by marketers were supported by “research” and only 3% of those studies which referenced scientific research gave statistical parameters. This was in fact found to be true of the Legend "clinical trials."
As you can see, the researchers made very ambiguous claims that 90-96% if the horses were judged as "good or excellent." If you don't look too far into what that means, it could be taken very positively! However, when you begin to think about how subjective those judgments really are, there is some doubt that begins to take hold.
Based on this research, it can be assumed that few of the selected advertisements will have concrete and statistical evidence to support their claims. The previous product, Legend joint injections, is just one example of a product that not only does not live up to its promises, but also has been shown to be tied to some detrimental effects. The root of this product is hyaluronic acid combined with a corticosteroid. The hyaluronic acid is a chemical found in healthy joints. In horses that have degenerative joint disease or arthritis, this chemical is often absent. These injections temporarily replace the hyaluronic acid and reduce pain and inflammation long enough for the horse to compete before it again feels the pain of the underlying issue. There have been many studies done, my personal favorites are two articles, one written by Chunekamrai et al. (1989) and the other by Kaniss et al. (2006). Kaniss et al. (2006) found that in individuals treated with these types of joint injections had an increased short term risk of secondary catastrophic injury such as fracture. This is believed to be due to treating the symptoms while leaving the underlying ailment unchecked. Chunekamrai et al. (1989) found that horses using joint injections such as Legend coupled with corticosteroids had decreased proteoglycan, chondrocyte necrosis, and collagen inhibition.
The point is, take the advertisements you see for equine pharmaceutical products with a grain of salt. Do your own research, and remember, you got into this business because you love horses! Don't let profit margins and medications drown that out.
This page has paths:
- Is What These Companies Are Doing Legal? Emma Talbot
- Why Are You Here? Emma Talbot
