Oral preparations of Sodium Hyaluronate or Hyaluronic Acid (HA) are marketed as a joint supplement. One of the original HA products was Legend (trademark by Bayer) and was only available in intra-articular injection (joint injection) or intravascular injection (IV) forms. Intra-articular injection has been shown to be more effective however with the risk of joint infection and the inconvenience of having to have a veterinarian perform the procedure plus the added cost, IV injection seemed to be the way to go, especially after the Colorado State University study in 1997 that should that intravenous injection of HA decreases inflammatory mediators in the joint and improves lameness. For study info Effects of intravenous administration of sodium hyaluronate
Then came the oral administrations and intial results were not that great with many horse owners saying that there were no signs of improvement. It was surmised that in order of preference for using HA intra-articular injection was better than intravenous injection which was better than oral administration. I have been promoting that mantra for a couple of years now.
Well along comes a study from Rood and Riddle last year…Oral hyaluronan gel You can click on the link to the abstract of the study but let me quote for you the Conclusion of this study…
“CONCLUSIONS AND POTENTIAL RELEVANCE: Oral preparations of hyaluronan are being used to treat joint disease in horse. Anecdotal reports supporting the efficacy of these preparations already exist. This study provides objective evidence that oral HA reduces joint effusion post operatively following the arthroscopic removal of an OCD lesion in the tarsocrural joint.”
Which means that oral HA does have some effectiveness and is better than what I had initially thought. With that said it is still expensive in comparison to other oral joint supplements and the studies have not been conducted to determine if it is any better than other supplements or better than injectable HA. I know it is not better than Adequan as the research on Adequan suggest some cartilage rebuild where as HA does not.
So for those of you that I have told you are wasting your money that is only partially true…it does seem to work but I am still on the fence as far as cost effectiveness.
I think I am going to go through all the joint supplements and explain each one in the next few posts. Leave feedback in my comments if you have a request on what joint supplement you would like to know about and don’t forget to check out my website E-VetClinic
