Objective—To characterize pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of detomidine gel administered sublingually in accordance with label instructions to establish appropriate withdrawal guidelines for horses before competition. Animals—12 adult racehorses. Procedures—Horses received a single sublingual administration of 0.04 mg of detomidine/kg. Blood samples were collected before and up to 72 hours after drug administration. Urine samples were collected for 5 days after detomidine administration. Plasma and urine samples were analyzed via liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry, and resulting data were analyzed by use of noncompartmental analysis. Chin-to-ground distance, heart rate and rhythm, glucose concentration, PCV, and plasma protein concentration were also assessed following detomidine administration. Results—Mean ± SD terminal elimination half-life of detomidine was 1.5 ± 1 hours. Metabolite concentrations were below the limit of detection (0.02, 0.1, and 0.5 ng/mL for detomidine, carboxydetomidine, and hydroxydetomidine, respectively) in plasma by 24 hours. Concentrations of detomidine and its metabolites were below the limit of detection (0.05 ng/mL for detomidine and 0.10 ng/mL for carboxydetomidine and hydroxydetomidine) in urine by 3 days. All horses had various degrees of sedation after detomidine administration. Time of onset was ≤ 40 minutes, and duration of sedation was approximately 2 hours. Significant decreases, relative to values at time 0, were detected for chin-to-ground distance and heart rate. There was an increased incidence and exacerbation of preexisting atrioventricular blocks after detomidine administration. Conclusions and Clinical Relevance—A 48-hour and 3-day withdrawal period for detection in plasma and urine samples, respectively should be adopted for sublingual administration of detomidine gel.

The scarcity of green during summer months imposes nutritional stress on farm animals. In this study we examined the effect of nutritional stress on various biochemical parameters of rabbits.Control and green deprived groups each of 20, weaned New Zealand White rabbits, of either sex, were randomly placed and observed for two months. Then green was re-introduced in deprived group for again two months. Blood sera harvested at every 15th day and analyzed using RA 50 Chemistry auto analyzer. Significant (p0.05) decrease of alkaline phosphatase (AKP), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and increase in gamma glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT) and serum cholesterol was observed in rabbits green deprived group.