Nutraceuticals in the management of dog osteoarthritis : critical appraisal of the literature ; Les nutraceutiques dans la gestion du chien arthrosique : analyse critique de la littérature

Osteoarthritis is a frequent painful and incapacitating degenerative disease. Several therapeutic options are available, none of them being enough on their own, which is why the usual recommandation is to combine them into a multimodal approach. One of the possible option relies on the use of nutraceuticals. Nutraceutical is a ill-defined term but it generally refers to the active ingredients that can be found in food. Nutraceuticals are perceived as long-term safe and effective products and are numerous on the market. However, from a scientifical point of view, their field is still poorly documented. The purpose of this work was to collect the actual knowledge on the pharmokinetics, the pharmacodynamics and the toxicity of nutraceuticals that claim to be appropriate in the treatement of dog osteoarthritis. As a second step, a review based on an Evidence-Based Veterinary Medecine method of the available clinical trials using the aforementioned nutraceuticals was carried out in order to ensure their level of evidence. The pharmokinetics datas are rarely complete. Because nutraceuticals don’t have to satisfy the same requirements as drugs, few studies are avaible and they often are controversial. The pharmacodynamics are usually well-known. Most of the in vitro studies corroborate their presumed anti-inflammatory and chondroprotective roles. The supposed absence of toxicity of nutraceuticals also seems to be accurate. Nevertheless, when considering the datas coming from the reviewed clinical trials, only omega-3 fatty acids brought by fish oil demonstrated a real reliable beneficial clinical effect on the pain and the mobility of arthritic dogs. When reading these conclusions, it should be kept in mind that the clinical signs evaluation methods, the osteoarthritis models, the injured joints and the dosages employed in the reviewed clinical trials were highly heterogeneous. Therefore precise comparison and unequivocal recommendations can not be drawn. Still it is possible to question the frequent usage of ...