After the rash of suspicious winners Sunday at Saratoga and Monmouth Park that lit up the racing firmament, the trainer at the heart of the story, Angel Quiroz, was charged Thursday with an alleged vets' list medication violation for Albuterol in a sample collected on July 10 from one of his trainees, Bonita Rough, at Fair Hill Training Center.The alleged offense is interesting for two reasons. There's the broader context of Quiroz's sudden rich run of success after a relatively quiet year. Then there are the nuances regarding the use of Albuterol under the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU).Albuterol is a bronchodilator, meaning it's designed to clear the airway, helping horses breathe easier.While the drug is banned when injected, it's permitted for use as an inhaled drug, just as long as it's prescribed by a veterinarian as part of a valid veterinarian-patient-client relationship as a bronchodilator. Furthermore, this administration must be recorded in the HISA Portal.Quiroz is charged with administering non-inhalation Albuterol. The maximum penalty associated with a banned substance positive from a vet's list sample would be a two-year suspension and $25,000 fine.So, let's get into some of the weeds.“Samples are taken at a snapshot in time. Concentrations of substances in a biological sample may provide some insight into the proximity in which it was administered,” wrote HIWU spokesperson, Alexa Ravit, in an email.But currently, there's no way to distinguish in a blood or urine sample the route of the Albuterol administration–in other words, whether it was injected or given through a nebulizer or inhaler–explained Ravit.“It's one of the drugs we always end up having a discussion about in any hearing,” said Cindy Cole, former director of The Racing Laboratory at the University of Florida. “If the trainer gave a typical dose intravenously, what would the concentration be X number of hours later.”This distinction, however, might not necessarily matter.If there are no veterinary records of prescribed albuterol administration via inhalation (the only permitted way the drug can be given), HIWU first assumes the substance was administered via a different route, Ravit explained.So, what can sample concentrations potentially tell us?Albuterol, Cole explained, is not especially well absorbed into the horse's system following inhaled administration.Indeed, this study found a bioavailability of only 19%, “which means that only 19% of the dose administered via inhalation is actually absorbed into the horse's system,” she said.While Albuterol is detectable following inhalation, concentrations of the drug in the blood or urine are much higher after an intravenous injection, even when a lesser dose is administered, Cole explained.Why?“One of the reasons that we really don't do a lot of nebulization anymore is it's not a very effective way to administer drugs to the horse,” explained Cole.“The horse has this very long trachea, and it's just really hard to get these relatively large water droplets all the way down into the alveoli [little air sacks in the lungs] or into the lower airways,” she added.Given intravenously, “it will diffuse from the blood into the muscle of the airway,” Cole explained.Just because a sample came back with a high concentration of Albuterol, however, it doesn't necessarily mean the drug was administered via injection.“You can't prove a negative, right?” said Cole. “It just means that if you gave a higher dose and nebulized the horse for longer–maybe you used a newer, better functioning nebulizer–you could possibly get enough in there to detect.”As a beta-2 adrenergic agonist, Albuterol is, like Clenbuterol, understood by many to have the ability to help build muscle and improve overall condition.“It could possibly have those effects,” said Cole, before adding how “it's one of the few drugs that I ever gave a horse that concerned me.”Cole shared an anecdote from her days as a researcher at UC Davis, when she was part of a team that administered a subcutaneous injection of Albuterol to horses.“I didn't give a big dose. But the horses get panicky because their heart rate goes up. They start sweating. They start muscle trembling. Then they freak out because they're like, 'what's going on?'” said Cole.“It was one of the few times I was like, 'we may have to sedate her,'” said Cole.Clenbuterol is also subject to the same regulations as Albuterol. In addition, however, the horse is placed on the Vets' List for at least 21 days post Clenbuterol administration and must pass Vets' List testing, during which blood and urine samples will be collected.According to Rick Arthur, the former equine medical director of the California Horse Racing Board, he once caught a Quarter Horse trainer who tried to administer a cocktail of both Albuterol and Clenbuterol.“We had one trainer that we actually found where he'd mixed Albuterol and Clenbuterol together in the same bottle,” Arthur recalled. “He was administering it orally.”The post Albuterol: An Explainer appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.