Compounded Gabapentin for Felines: Associated Metabolic Processes and Analysis of Potency

Pharmaceutical compounding provides pharmacists and clinicians the opportunity to create unique drug formulations that are better suited to a specific patient’s needs. This is especially prevalent in veterinary medicine where clinicians treat a variety of maladies in a large number of species, thereby requiring unique formulations to more easily deliver drugs to animals. Several examples of compounded veterinary formulations with sub-therapeutic potencies have been published, but none examine compounded gabapentin. Gabapentin is frequently compounded into an oral suspension for veterinary use from tablets or capsules for the purpose of pain management in felines and other small animals. The project’s goals are two-fold. Utilizing HPLC, the primary aim is to quantify the concentration of gabapentin in compounded formulations of the drug from various pharmacy sources. The data generated will be cross-referenced with US Pharmacopeia guidelines to determine if the concentration of gabapentin is within appropriate ranges for the oral suspensions, providing insight into the efficacy of the protocols employed to complete the compounding process. The second goal is to provide a brief review of the literature on veterinary compounding, its need and limitations, and specifically administration of gabapentin and its associated metabolic processes. We predict that the specific formulations acquired for testing have been compounded efficaciously and will not be in violation of US Pharmacopeia guidelines. However, larger-scale testing of compounded formulations of gabapentin would be necessary to confirm the efficacy of the process taken to compound gabapentin for animal use