Kentucky joins states seeking Lasix exemption from HISA

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission on Monday unanimously approved a plan to petition the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority for an exemption to a policy that would ban raceday furosemide in all races for the next three years.

The commission approved the plan without discussion after Dr. Bruce Howard, the commission’s equine medical director, said that KHRC staff and the commission’s Equine Drug Research Council supported the petition. Under the petition, raceday furosemide use will still be banned in 2-year-old races and stakes races, which is the current policy in Kentucky.

Kentucky is the latest state to approve a petition for the exemption, and all major racing states are expected to make identical petitions. Although the legislation creating HISA called for a ban on raceday furosemide beginning on Jan. 1., the authority created the exemption as a way to forestall and avoid a contentious debate over an outright ban and gather data over the next three years on the impact of furosemide use.

Howard told commissioners that “it would be detrimental to horse health and welfare” if Kentucky did not seek the exemption, citing the study, which is designed to compare the performance and health outcomes of horses that receive a raceday administration of the drug with those horses that do not. Under HISA’s existing rules, all medication administrations have to be reported to the authority, and supporters of the study have said that access to that additional data on treatments will allow for the most comprehensive study to date of bleeding in the lungs and medication use.

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Howard also told the commission, however, that Kentucky needed to “be in alignment” with the rest of the U.S. by seeking the exemption. Any jurisdiction that allows the outright ban to go into effect at the start of next year will almost certainly face the possibility that trainers will seek out-of-state options to take advantage of legal raceday furosemide use.

“Not requesting this exemption could put Kentucky at a disadvantage with the rest of the racing industry,” Dr. Howard said.

Last week, the New York Gaming Commission also approved a petition for an exemption, but only after a half-hour of discussion of the issue. In the end, the commission unanimously approved the petition, under the same rationales cited by Dr. Howard.

Also at the meeting, the commission approved the funding of two studies, one looking at gene-doping and the other at biomechanical changes in the strides of horses while working out.

The gene-doping study is being led by Dr. Scott Stanley, the head of Kentucky’s drug-testing lab, and Dr. Cicely Wood. Under the study, according to Dr. Howard, the researchers will look at 12 specific genes “that could be manipulated to improve performance” in an attempt to target ways to detect gene-doping. The commission approved $241,000 in funding for the first year of the two-year study.

The biomechanical study is designed to collect data on horses during training hours to measure changes in stride dynamics and compare those changes to “ideal” strides. The study will use an existing motion-sensor technology, called StrideSafe, that has been used in multiple jurisdictions over the past several years to gather data on stride dynamics in racehorses during actual racing conditions.

The technology behind StrideSafe has been hailed by many equine health experts for its promise in identifying horses that may be at risk for a significant musculoskeletal injury. The study that the KHRC agreed to fund will measure the stride dynamics of 2,000 training sessions and compare those to data collected during racing performances in order to expand the database and attempt to develop new markers for at-risk horses, Dr. Brown said.

The commission approved $128,723 in funding for the study.

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