FLAIR Strips reduce EIPH - Excercise Induced Pulmonary Hemorrhage or "bleeding" in horses. Bleeding is a health problem that occurs in horses that work hard such as during racing, steeple chasing, cross-country, hurdles, road and track, stadium jumping, barrel racing, and endurance racing. Some studies report that horses bleed even when doing mild exercise such as trotting on a treadmill. Many people believe that if a horse doesn’t show blood at the nostrils, then it’s not bleeding. This is incorrect. Typically, bleeding is a silent injury that can go undetected by trainers and riders because it occurs deep in the lungs and is best detected by lung washes or endoscopy. In addition, blood in the airways has been shown to be an irritant that leads to further bleeding. Thus, reducing bleeding not only helps a horse perform better in the short term, but may also help in the long term by reducing the possibility of inflammatory airway disease and chronic lung damage due to repeated bleeding.

The first breakthrough in understanding the role of FLAIR® Strips in reducing EIPH was by a research team at Kansas State University, which included Dr. David Marlin, formerly of the Animal Health Trust, Newmarket, England, and led by Dr. Howard Erickson and Dr. David Poole. In 1999 the Kansas State group published the first data from studies of the FLAIR® Equine Nasal Strip on exercising Thoroughbreds. The data showed that horses affected by EIPH that wore a nasal strip had fewer blood cells in their airways after exercise when compared to the same horses not wearing the strip. This group was the first to show that bleeding could be reduced by normalizing air flow with a nasal strip.

Erickson’s team subsequently showed similar protective effects when horses were treated with the injectable drug, furosemide. However, rather than normalizing air flow, furosemide is a potent diuretic that works by reducing blood volume and pulmonary vascular pressures. Unfortunately, the drug reduces blood volume by increasing urine production, which consequently reduces fluid in the tissues and organs of the body. Side effects of furosemide use include dehydration, weight loss, and electrolyte loss, particularly potassium.