#Otomax forum skin#
But, if the horse is jogging away from you and it's got irritated skin on the perineum, that's not something you'd notice–perhaps. To be fair, it's not part of your routine inspection to lift the tail and look underneath. Was the skin disease noted by the commission veterinarians in any of their contact with the horse? Don't know. Intact skin is a fairly effective barrier, so, again this is where an assessment of the horse's physical condition would be helpful. If you could absorb lots of toxins and noxious substances through your skin, you'd be in trouble. The skin's a pretty good barrier–it's intended to prevent you from absorbing lots of stuff. Intact skin would likely absorb less into the blood stream than inflamed skin, or an open wound where there's more direct contact between the blood and the blood vessels and the medication. And again–because I never make anything easy, right–that would depend on the condition of the skin, too. I don't know that there's any pharmacokinetic data on concentrations of betamethasone following topical treatment. Would the levels of betamethasone detected in Medina Spirit also have required him to have ingested the topical ointment? In the scenario you presented in our first interview, the horse who tested positive for betamethasone after topical treatment of an ointment had also ingested the ointment. It's plausible–the horse was exposed to betamethasone, so, that's beyond where we were a day ago when the horse had never been exposed to betamethasone. In his statement, Baffert claims that the positive finding could be the result of use of a betamethasone-containing anti-fungal ointment called Otomax, which was used to treat dermatitis. The two interviews have been spliced into the following, which has been edited for brevity and clarity. In her first interview, Scollay raised the possibility that the positive could be the result of exposure through use of a topical product that contains betamethasone. The TDN spoke with Scollay both prior to, and after, Baffert released his statement Tuesday. Scollay was recently appointed to the Anti-Doping and Medication Control Standing Committee arm of the Horseracing integrity and Safety Authority. To discuss some of the issues that Baffert has raised in his interviews, the TDN spoke with Mary Scollay, executive director and chief operating officer of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC). In Tuesday's statement, Baffert repeated those accusations, arguing that “horse racing must address its regulatory problem when it comes to substances which can innocuously find their way into a horse's system at the picogram (which is a trillionth of a gram) level.” During these interviews, Baffert cast serious doubts on drug testing protocols currently in use in horse racing, arguing how, among other things, the hyper-sensitivity of modern testing technologies leaves horses susceptible to positives through cross-contamination.
#Otomax forum series#
Prior to Tuesday's announcement, Baffert had conducted a series of national interviews in which he maintained his innocence and insisted that he and his team have never administered betamethasone to Medina Spirit.
“I have been told by equine pharmacology experts that this could explain the test results.”
“Yesterday, I was informed that one of the substances in Otomax is betamethasone,” the statement reads. On Tuesday morning, Baffert released a statement explaining that following the GI Runhappy Santa Anita Derby, Medina Spirit had developed dermatitis on his hind end and that his veterinarian had recommended daily use of an anti-fungal ointment called Otomax. A split sample will now go for confirmation testing. The previous threshold was 10 picograms per milliliter. In Kentucky as of last year, a detection of betamethasone at any level is deemed a violation. That morning, of course, trainer Bob Baffert announced that GI Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit (Protonico) had tested positive for 21 picograms per milliliter of betamethasone in a post-race sample.īetamethasone is a regulated corticosteroid commonly used in horse racing as an intra-articular joint injection.
Since Sunday morning, horse racing has largely been a one-issue sport.
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