Monday, October 8, 2012

Cystorelin GnRH label change

Merial has announced that the conditions for storing Cystorelin/GnRH have been changed and the label updated.

It now can be stored at room temperature - and doesn't have to be refrigerated. (this is something that has been mentioned unofficially in the past from company tech people, but now glad to see it approved and on the label.). What conditions?

Room temperature(77F or below)is fine - brief exposures to 86F are okay too. If it's opened, and unused after 6 months, discard the bottle.

This is an important point and a good time to reinforce something mentioned often in proper use of GnRH. It is a polypeptide - like a small protein chain and can easily be damaged by contaminating bacteria. That's food for them. Get a contaminated vial and then you end up injecting pieces of GnRH with no activity. When you inject Cystorelin, always and only use a new needle to pull from the vial. If you have a partial vial left, before taking a dose from bottle, wipe the top with an alcohol swab and give it 30 seconds. You don't want to waste the drug and especially waste the effort of getting a response from your cow on an OvSynch or other program. I've recently swabbed some tops of medicine vials on cattle farm medicine cabinets and the growth on a normal blood agar plate is eye-opening.

So this goes for all medicine on the farm. Keep in a clean spot, new needles and swab the tops in certain cases. The advantage on this label change for Cystorelin is easy shipping over the weekend without ice packs.