SOUTHERN CAPE NEWS - A study published online during September in the scientific journal Chemosphere, has shown the lethal effects to vultures of a popular painkilling drug used in the cattle farming industry.
The toxic drug is known as carprofen and is from the same family of drugs as diclofenac.
The frequent and widespread use of diclofenac to treat cattle and buffalo in South Asia is what was responsible for the catastrophic population declines in vultures in that region.
Birds that consumed the carcasses of livestock treated with diclofenac experienced severe renal failure and death within hours to days.
As a result, five species of South Asian vulture are now endangered or critically endangered.
Against this background, conservationists in South Africa are extremely concerned about the impact of similar veterinary drugs on the vultures which are indigenous to this region.
To better understand the impact of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) on southern African vultures, a team of researchers from the University of Pretoria, the United Kingdom and associated conservation partners have been conducting a range of toxicity trials.
So far, only one common drug, meloxicam, has been shown not to kill vultures at the maximum level of exposure in a carcass.
Tens of drugs belong to this family and the toxicity of most remains unknown.
Prof Vinny Naidoo, a co-author of the study and Director of the Biomedical Research Centre, University of Pretoria says: “We wanted to safety test carprofen because we had some evidence that this drug might be non-toxic to vultures.
"This would provide vets and farmers with another vulture-safe alternative to diclofenac.”
When cattle are treated with carprofen, the drug collects in the kidneys and in the tissue around the site of the injection. In a controlled experiment, vultures were given kidney tissue rich in carprofen or pure carprofen at the maximum levels measured in kidney tissue.
These vultures showed no toxicity. However, the researchers found that carprofen concentrations were much higher at the injection site than in the kidneys or liver of the cattle used in the experiment.
One of two vultures exposed to the average concentration found at the injection site died. Post-mortem examination of this vulture found severe kidney and liver damage evident of NSAID poisoning.
“Our NSAID safety testing provides the critical evidence needed to bring about bans and save tens of thousands of vultures,” says Toby Galligan, a co-author of the study and Senior Conservation Scientist at the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science, UK.
“We carefully designed our experiment to minimise the number of vultures that may die for that cause.”
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