FLAVORx teams up with Wedgewood Pharmacy to make it even easier to make pet medications taste good

(Swedesboro NJ, January 21, 2008) The Veterinary Division of FLAVORx, Inc., which distributes a veterinary-medicine flavoring system, and Wedgewood Pharmacy, the nation’s largest compounding pharmacy, have teamed up to provide a new, convenient option for veterinarians to make pet medications taste good. The FLAVORx system provides “recipes” that veterinarians use to add flavors to specially-formulated prescription suspensions from Wedgewood Pharmacy. The process is quick, easy and cost-effective and make it easier for pet owners to administer medications — and tastier for pets to take their medicine.

The FLAVORx system lets veterinarians turn bitter or foul-tasting medications into readily-accepted, flavored liquids, a process that dramatically improves animals’ compliance with critical medication regimes and reduces owners’ stress of medicating their animals. The arrangement with Wedgewood Pharmacy allows veterinarians to use finished, custom-made medicines that have been compounded under strict quality-control standards rather than the pure chemicals many now use as the basis for making flavored medicines. This in turn will decrease a veterinarian’s investment in large-quantity chemical inventories, equipment and time required to weigh, measure and compound the preparations they flavor in their clinics.

Initially, Wedgewood will offer six specially formulated unflavored compounds to FLAVORx customers:

• Potassium bromide250MG/ML, commonly prescribed for treatment of seizures in dogs;
• Clindamycin 25MG/ML, an antibiotic;
• Metronidazole Benzoate 50MG/ML and 100MG/ML, an antifungal;
• Prednisolone 5MG/ML, a glucocorticoid;
• Methimazole 5MG/ML: commonly prescribed for hyperthyroidism;
• Cisapride 5 and 10MG/ML, a gastrointestinal prokinetic, commonly prescribed for treatment of megacolon or chronic constipation in cats.

A compounding pharmacy creates customized medications for individual patients in response to a licensed practitioner’s prescription. Wedgewood Pharmacy is one of the largest compounding pharmacies in the United States, serving more than 25,000 prescribers of compounded medications. It is located in Swedesboro NJ and licensed throughout the United States.

Because every patient is different and has different needs, customized, compounded medications are a vital part of quality medical care. The basis of the profession of pharmacy has always been the "triad," the patient-prescriber-pharmacist relationship.

Through this relationship, patient needs are determined by a prescriber, who chooses a treatment regimen that may include a compounded medication. Prescribers often prescribe compounded medications for reasons that include (but are not limited to) the following situations:

• When needed medications are discontinued by or generally unavailable from pharmaceutical companies, often because the medications are no longer profitable to manufacture;
• When the patient is allergic to certain preservatives, dyes or binders in available off-the shelf medications;
• When treatment requires tailored dosage strengths for patients with unique needs (for example, an infant);
• When a pharmacist can combine several medications the patient is taking to increase compliance;
• When the patient cannot ingest the medication in its commercially available form and a pharmacist can prepare the medication in cream, liquid or other form that the patient can easily take; and
• When medications require flavor additives to make them more palatable for some patients.

For additional information, visit the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists’ Web site at www.iacprx.org and www.compoundingfacts.org.