Transdermal delivery of carnosine into equine skeletal muscle
Randomised controlled trialHorsesTopical
- Design
- Randomised controlled trial
- Subjects
- 10 Thoroughbred racehorses, randomised placebo-controlled crossover
- Dose used in the study
- carnosine plus a proprietary transdermal delivery agent, or the agent alone as placebo, applied over the middle gluteal muscle; amount not in the abstract
- Duration
- single application; biopsies at 0, 30, 60 and 120 minutes
- What was measured
- Muscle carnosine concentration in middle gluteal biopsies by ELISA before and 30, 60 and 120 minutes after application; two-way repeated measures ANOVA for treatment, time and interaction; F-tests for change from baseline at each time.
What the authors reported
The authors report a significant main effect of treatment (P=0.004), no main effect of time (P=0.18) and no significant interaction (P=0.08). Compared with placebo, muscle carnosine was about 35% higher at 30 minutes (P=0.002) and about 46% higher at 60 minutes (P=0.044), and not different at 120 minutes (P=0.20). They conclude intramuscular carnosine can be raised within 60 minutes by a transdermal system.
Limits of this study
First author affiliated with Velocity Animal Sciences, the product company. Carnosine dose, product name and absolute muscle values are not in the abstract. ELISA rather than the HPLC used in earlier equine work. No performance, lactate, pH or recovery outcome. Effect gone by 120 minutes. Closed access; no independent replication found.
Source
Entry checked against abstract (OpenAlex record for DOI 10.3920/cep200077, reconstructed from inverted index); publisher pages at Brill and Wageningen Academic could not be loaded on 2026-10-11. The dose shown is the dose the researchers used. It is not a recommendation. How to read this page.