INTRODUCTION

I am a veterinary surgeon who owns Anrich Veterinary Hospital in Caroline Street, Wigan WN3 4EL. I have been qualified and a Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons for 30 years. I have been in small animal practice for all of this time and have owned my practice in Wigan since 1981 and Huddersfield since 2007. The practice sees seventy to one hundred clients daily.

TRIAL SET UP

There are a variety of cases seen daily of which dermatology cases make up about 10-20%. I agreed to undertake a blind trial of the “DermOpt” shampoo during August to October 2008. Cases were selected based on history and client compliance. In private practice clients are paying for the service and only a small percentage of clients are happy to test a new product in a trial. To maintain standardization of assessment of cases it was decided for the trial to be maintained entirely by myself. Also in the busy day of a practice of this size it is difficult to control and monitor information from a number of different vets. More information could be gained by widening the trial to a number of practices and thus increase the number of cases tested to more than 200. In reality this would increase the time frame of doing, then collating the trial to more than a year. Even this small trial has taken five months to start, run and collate. When it’s being done in a busy practice when the trial is secondary to the normal days work, everything takes longer to achieve.

Client compliance is always a factor in these trials when the vet needs to establish that the treatment is being applied as directed and is returning to the practice for regular check ups to establish if the condition is responding to treatment or not.

Twenty eight clients were asked to participate and agreed to start the trial. Of the twenty eight starting the trial however, twelve completed the treatment satisfactorily to be of value in assessing the product.

The bottles of shampoo were delivered to the practice as blank bottles with only a number on them so that when the shampoo was being dispensed, I was unaware if it was product or control. Clients had to have the protocol explained to them in great detail and that there was a possibility that the shampoo they were being given could possibly be the blank control. However, as these were paying customers it was not possible to test the shampoo without concurrent antibiotic or steroid therapy. In fact this was not perceived to be a significant problem as the shampoo this product is ostensibly being compared with is Malaseb Shampoo, which is recognized as being the dermatologists “gold standard” shampoo in dermatology cases no matter what the cause of the condition is. Thus DermOpt is actually being compared with the control and with Malaseb cases also.

In addition to the clinical analysis during this time, the shampoo has also been used on dogs being groomed in our grooming parlour.

SKIN CONDITIONS TREATED

The conditions treated consisted of dematological conditions that had skin reactions ranging from dry squamous skin lesions, both individual and multiple to wet pustular lesions. Diagnoses consisted of Allergic Dermatitis with secondary bacterial infection, Ringworm, Mange (demodex and sorcoptes) and Fleas.

RESULTS OF TREATMENT

Of 12 cases that a full report and history was available, 8 showed good improvement PPS and 4 should no improvement. When 2 of the 4 were subsequently put on Malaseb they should some subsequent improvement. When the shampoo numbers were related to the list of product and controls it showed that the 4 cases that showed no improvement were the control products with no active ingredient in them. In this small trial, 100% of the cases on DermOpt did make some or a full improvement.

In Malseb treatment, possibly approximately 20% of cases will see no difference when the shampoo is used, with or without concurrent treatment.

The only alteration in application in clinically chronic cases will be to leave the shampoo on for longer when they are being bathed before grooming. These cases receive a bath and groom more frequently (6 weekly) than normal pets. The DermOpt product made sufficient impression in improving skin cases that it will be the practice policy to change the shampoo of choice which was previously Malaseb to DermOpt when it becomes available on general release.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the trial indicated that DermOpt shampoo did in fact produce a significant improvement in the clinical conditions tested against. An improvement in overall skin condition was significant if cases that were ostensibly normal in the dog grooming parlour.

The practice will subsequently use DermOpt shampoo as the shampoo of choice in its grooming parlour even for normal dogs.

NOTE

This report is somewhat limited by numbers of cases treated and time to assess, discuss and then collate the information subsequently. However, if other practices can be encouraged to use the product and a report sheet was filled in detailing the diagnosis and the additional treatment the pet is on, with the resulting outcome, will further help to improve the strength of recommendation.

I have not included any literature information as am not aware of any other work done that has been written up that I could read and compare with trials of other products.

Anrich Vets, Wigan