Ingredients That Inhibit Clotting Alfalfa Angelica Aniseed Arnica Bioflavonoids Bromelain Buchu Capsicum Celery, seed or extract Chamomile, German or Roman Clove Dehydroepiandrosterone Evening primrose oil Feverfew Fucus Garlic Ginger Ginkgo Grapeseed/proanthocyanidin Horse chestnut Horseradish Jiaogulan Lavender Licorice Meadowsweet Melilot Panax Ginseng Pau d’arco Policosanol Quassia Red clover Rosemary Salvia Sweet woodruff Tonka beans Willow

As herbal and nutraceutical therapies grow in popularity, the potential for a horse to be receiving both drugs and these supplements increases. One area of potential concern in horses is the effect on blood clotting. This could be a particular problem for horses with gastric or colonic ulcers, those that may require surgery, or those with indwelling venous catheters that would be receiving treatments with heparin to prevent clotting in the lines.

Some commonly used herbal mixtures, e.g. for arthritis, contain multiple ingredients that could influence clotting. Aspirin and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (phenylbutazone, etc.) are widely prescribed for a variety of lamenesses or other painful conditions and have anticlotting activity. A wide variety of antibiotics, including the popular oral combination of trimethoprim and a sulfa, are also known to interact with medications that prolong clotting, although it’s not clear if this is a direct effect or if they influence the metabolism and clearance of the other drugs.

The actual risk of an herb-drug interaction occurring that could cause blood-clotting problems, or what dosages of each would be required, is unknown, all the more reason though to keep the possibility in mind. Be sure to inform your veterinarian or veterinary hospital if you are using one or more herbs that may influence clotting, and get advice before starting herbals with this capacity if your horse is already being treated with a drug that may do the same.

Yeast Treatment For Enterocolitis
Enterocolitis is a diffuse, severe inflammation of the intestinal tract, usually caused by an infectious organism like Salmonella or the Ehrlichia of Potomac Horse Fever. Enterocolitis may also occur when large numbers of the beneficial bacteria in the intestine are killed off, as with heavy antibiotic therapy or if a horse has a severe colic.

Although caused by infectious organisms, many forms of enterocolitis aren’t treated with antibiotics because they either don’t help, or actually make things worse. Treatment is primarily supportive in most cases, with intravenous fluids and electrolytes, anti-inflammatories to help ward off laminitis, and hope the horse will get over it.

A study completed at the University of Pennsylvania found that treating horses with 25 to 50 grams of lypholized Saccharomyces boulardii, a yeast with beneficial probiotic effects in other species, significantly decreased the severity and duration of clinical signs of enterocolitis in hospitalized horses. Clinical trials in people with enterocolitis show good results.

How the yeast works isn’t clear, since it doesn’t directly kill pathogenic bacteria. Possibilities are an immune stimulant effect, interfering with the binding of the bacteria to the intestinal wall, changing conditions within the bowel so that the bacterial growth is suppressed, or simply crowding the pathogens out by sheer numbers.

S. boulardii is available as a human supplement, but there are no pure, high-dose, equine probiotics on the market at this time. It’s unknown whether the more available Saccharomyces cerevisiae, another beneficial probiotic yeast strain, would have a similar effect.