Veterinary Pharmacy, a Dismissed Necessity

Abstract

Veterinary pharmaceuticals play an important role in human and animal health. Although some dosage forms are specially designed for use in animals (e.g. ear tags, collars and darts), most drug delivery systems (including nano-carriers and controlled drug delivery systems) are common between animals and human (1). A successful drug development process (for human or animal use), from initial drug discovery to market, requires skill and knowledge in different areas of science of which some disciplines (e.g. pharmaceutics) are exclusively covered in pharmacy undergraduate or postgraduate programs. Pharmaceutics is the art, science and technology of drug delivery system design, manufacture and control and include pre-formulation studies, dosage form design, pharmaceutical processing, quality control, quality assurance, biopharmaceutics and etc. Therefore, like human medicine, pharmacists are expected to design, manufacture and control veterinary drug delivery systems at both levels of pharmaceutical companies or compounding in a pharmacy. This is not what is happening in most veterinary pharmaceutical companies and almost all veterinary-based pharmacies in here, where the professions are performed by veterinary medical doctors (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, DVM) (2). The educational program in veterinary medicine (DVM) is clinical-based and is focused on prevention, diagnosis and treatment of animal diseases (3), the same perspective as that designed for the physicians (MD). While, there is not such authorization for physicians to act the same in humanoriented pharmaceutical systems. On the other hand, formulation of many drugs for human use is seldom suited for animal administration (4). Design and preparation of veterinary drug delivery systems requires different considerations and is facing more challenges than that of human formulations and cannot be implemented based on human data only. Following are some special considerations (1, 5):