Posts Tagged ‘ron genovese’

Lidocaine and clenbuterol, the drugs associated with the latest positive tests for Steve Asmussen and Rick Dutrow, are commonly used therapeutic medications with specific uses. Both also have the potential for being abused and are prohibited substances.

The positive tests will be widely covered in the mainstream media because Dutrow and Asmussen are trainers of the two leading Thoroughbreds in America, Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown and 2007 Horse of the Year, Curlin, respectively.

Asmussen’s positive in Texas was for lidocaine, a short-acting anesthetic similar to procaine. Dr. Thomas Brokken, a racetrack practitioner in South Florida and past president of the American Association of Equine Practitioners, said lidocaine is a lot like the numbing anesthetics used by human dentists.

“Usually it’s very short-acting, with a half-life in minutes,” he said. “Normally, I was use it to repair lacerations, suture fillies up behind, or to block horses that are lame and I need to find out where they are lame,” Brokken said. “That’s about all I use it for. Some may use it in an epidural for a horse sore in its back or pelvic area.” A Class 2 drug according to the Association of Racing Commissioners International classifications, lidocaine has a recommended withdrawal time in Texas of 96-120 hours.

Dr. Ron Genovese of the Cleveland Equine Clinic in Ohio, said he no longer uses lidocaine in his practice, preferring to use mepivacaine for lameness examinations and other procedures where an anesthetic is required. Both Dutrow and Asmussen, along with multiple Eclipse Award-winning trainer Todd Pletcher, have been penalized for past mepivacaine positives.

Dutrow’s Kentucky positive was for clenbuterol, a Class 3 drug with a recommended 72-hour withdrawal time in Kentucky (the recommended withdrawal time in New York, where Dutrow is based, is 96 hours). Clenbuterol, typically given to horses daily in the form of the Ventipulmin syrup, is used to help clean up mucus in a horse’s airways.

“A lot of horses have mucus,” Brokken said. “Clenbuterol doesn’t heal anything but it opens the airways to help the macrophages clean up debris in the throat. The macrophages work on oxygen, so if there’s no oxygen they don’t perform well. Clenbuterol opens the airways to oxygen.”

Stephen Reed, a veterinarian at Rood and Riddle Hospital in Lexington, Ky., estimates that 50% or more horses in training have some degree of mucus.

Genovese, who sees horses mainly at Thistledown racetrack in Ohio, said he sees very little use of clenbuterol in his practice. “It’s expensive,” he said. “But mucus is a chronic, irritating factor in the racehorse business. You have to understand that when horses put in bad performances, people have to search for reasons, which is understandable. You can’t talk to the patient. We scope it and and you can see they breathe in a lot of dirt or Polytrack. Many trainers or owners see that and think one and one adds up to two.”

Some trainers racing on circuits with higher purses use the drug on a majority of their horses to help them train more vigorously, since it improves their breathing. “I use that medication on many of my horses and only once can ever remember having a problem with it,” Dutrow told the New York Times.

Clenbuterol is used illegally with other livestock, including sheep and cattle, to produce more defined muscles. “The drug does have a partitioning effect,” Reed said. “It selects for lean body mass. Some trainers use it for a minor anabolic effect. If used correctly for problems in the lungs, however, it can have a great benefit.

 “One of the things that worries me,” Reed continued, “is that some of the newer, more sophisticated testing is able to detect levels that couldn’t be therapeutic but would indicate the drug is on board. In the current day and age, regarding medications in any athlete, human or equine, having nothing on board is the way to go. As a bronchialdilator, it has the potential to help. It shouldn’t be given close to the time of racing.”

By Ray Paulick

Copyright ©2008, The Paulick Report