Bova UK has confirmed that its long acting injectable omeprazole product has been declared free of testosterone.

A test by the Australian Racing Forensic Laboratory (ARFL) of samples from the newly prepared batch of Bova’s 100mg/ml injectable omeprazole formulation did not detect testosterone. Racing New South Wales, has released a statement that the product can continue to be used in racehorses following the guidance of Australian Commonwealth and State legislation.

“Traces of testosterone in the previous batch were less than one millionth of the internationally accepted standard for impurities”, said Nick Bova, managing director of Bova UK. “Independent experts confirmed that there could be no adverse effects on equine health or equestrian sport, however, we have taken steps to identify and completely eliminate the excipient ingredient that contained traces of testosterone”.

Nick continued: “Bova can confirm that new batches of this product will not contain the previous trace levels of testosterone and therefore Bova are confident there will be no antidoping issues, no matter what the equestrian pursuit is”.

To ensure that it is of the highest quality standard the formulation is tested for quality assurance purposes prior to it being dispensed to patients. To exclude the presence of testosterone the product is tested with a highly sensitive and specific method before release for sale.

“Many vets and horse owners now rely on long acting injectable omeprazole for horses that do not respond to oral treatment”, said Nick. “Clinical trials of Bova’s injectable omeprazole compared it to a registered oral omeprazole and found that the injectable product had four times the rate of healing in both glandular (EGGD) and squamous gastric disease (ESGD) in high level endurance horses”.
A published study on injectable omeprazole can be found here https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...1111/evj.12688