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Nutraceutical use in osteoarthritic canines: a review

02 July 2021
Clinical
9 mins read
02 July 2021
Volume 26 · Issue 7

Abstract

Osteoarthritis is prevalent in the UK canine population and has a clear impact on animal welfare. Treatment of osteoarthritis is advised to be multimodal, with nutraceuticals becoming a popular part of this approach. However, veterinary nutraceuticals are not subject to any regulation and systematic reviews are still uncommon in the veterinary field, which makes evaluating these products difficult. This article looks at the most commonly used veterinary supplements and how to critically evaluate the evidence of their efficacy. Evidence is promising for omega-3 fatty acids but is limited for other common ingredients. There are limited numbers of rigorous, randomised controlled trials and veterinary studies are often hampered by small sample sizes. Standardisation of reporting, as performed in human medicine, is needed to allow more robust systematic reviews of nutraceuticals to subsequently enable vets to make more informed decisions.

Osteoarthritis is a condition that every first opinion vet will have frequently encountered. Prevalence rates in published papers have varied wildly, with most reporting between 20 and 30% of the canine population aged over 1 year displaying some radiographic degree of osteoarthritis (Paster et al, 2005; Aragon et al, 2007; Comblain et al, 2016) and up to 40% of all cats being affected clinically, increasing to 90% of cats over 12 years of age (Lascelles, 2010).

The largest study of osteoarthritis in dogs under veterinary care was conducted recently by VetCompass, covering 455 557 dogs. The results showed a lower prevalence of 2.5% of dogs being recorded with clinical and or radiographic signs of osteoarthritis in 2013 (Anderson et al, 2018). However, this still equates to 200 000 affected dogs in the UK annually. By looking at the frequency, duration and severity of clinical signs all together, osteoarthritis was found to be one of three conditions that had the highest welfare impact overall on dogs. Obesity was one of the other top three conditions affecting animal welfare and it is worth noting that overweight dogs had 2.3 times the risk of developing osteoarthritis.

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evidence-based medicine
nutraceuticals
omega-3
osteoarthritis