Question for JB

[BH]

http://www.thoroughbredtimes.com/racing-news/2009/October/11/Hollywood-Hit-tests-positive-for-Acepromazine.aspx

Jerry, has any testing ever been done to determine how often a bad test isn\'t the result of intentional rule breaking?
Has anyone ever quarantined horses under closely monitored conditions, administered a drug, and then tested the levels daily until cleared to see if the withdrawal time is reasonable for the drug? I know this is done initially to set withdrawal times.  But it would warrant investigating how often in say, 100 horses, a trainer could expect a legally medicated animal to test \'positive\'.
It\'s easy to be jaded and say all trainers cheat but all trainers don\'t cheat.

[TGJB]

Just got back from KY (depositions in the Rachel case, which went well). Don\'t know the answer to any of those questions.

[sighthound]

>> Jerry, has any testing ever been done to determine how often a bad test isn\'t the result of intentional rule breaking?

I\'m not JB but I can give you some information.

It is known, by looking at years of drug testing results, that NEARLY ALL positive tests are for tiny micro-overages of commonly used therapeutic medications.

That\'s right, most positives are pretty benign and indicate nothing.  No way the horse would have been affected, or the amount of drug could remotely indicate an intent to do something nefarious.

For nearly all the commonly used drugs (like clenbuterol, NSAIDS, etc) we know the pharmacology, as they are therapeutic drugs we\'ve used for years.  We know how much drug to use to maintain what therapeutic blood level, we know how long drugs last in the blood at that level (the metabolism half-life), we know how often we have to repeat a drug administration and at what dose to maintain a therapeutic level.

Realize that horse racing isn\'t the only people doing drug testing - the horse show world, on an international level, has done it for years longer, and has often been ahead of the horse racing world on drug testing.

If a trainer has micrograms of a drug found in the horses\' bloodstream, and we know the drug can\'t possibly have any clinical effect unless the bloodstream level is 10,000 times higher than what was found  - doubtful that was any intent to cheat, or that the drug was given within the witholding time.  

>> Has anyone ever quarantined horses under closely monitored conditions, administered a drug, and then tested the levels daily until cleared to see if the withdrawal time is reasonable for the drug?

Many times.  That is the type of stuff the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium does.   It is also done by pharmaceutical companies when new drugs are developed and put on the market - but looking at therapeutic drug levels -  so we know all that for thousands of drugs currently in use.

>> I know this is done initially to set withdrawal times.

You know, it usually wasn\'t, believe it or not.  Sometimes times were just a \"best guesstimate\" based upon known pharmacology in the average horse.  That didn\'t matter when detection methods were crude, and only large amounts of drug can be detected.  But it sure matters now, that picograms -  \"whiffs\" - can be detected.  

A positive nowadays doesn\'t necessarily mean there\'s any remotely effective amount of drug in the horses\' bloodstream.  Pletchers\' famous mepivicaine positive is a good example.  There wasn\'t enough mepivicaine in the horse to deaden the joint of a mouse, let alone a horse.  But, with zero tolerance, that microamount was a positive.

>>But it would warrant investigating how often in say, 100 horses, a trainer could expect a legally medicated animal to test \'positive\'.

Allowable blood levels of drugs (like most laboratory values) are nearly always set to a basic statistical Bell curve type of thing

 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution    go down to the blue \"standard deviation\" chartand discussion well down the page on the right]

 so usually a very predictable \"less than a few percentage points\" of horses will be legally medicated yet test positive.   It is true a horse could have been given meds within the legal limit and yet still test positive.

>>It\'s easy to be jaded and say all trainers cheat but all trainers don\'t cheat.

Most trainers don\'t treat, and nearly all positives are for extremely low, non-therapeutic or effective levels of legal therapeutic medications.

[BH]

Thanks for the very clear answers.