Effects of an extract of Serenoa repens on dogs with hyperplasia of the prostate gland

Impact of Nutritional Supplementation on Canine Dermatological Disorders

Nutritional supplements, also known as complementary feeds, are products administered with the aim of furnishing health benefits, regardless of nutritional needs. They have been used since ancient times in veterinary dermatology, and a number of studies have focused on investigating the health benefits of some ingredients found in commercially available complementary feed for dogs. The aim of this paper is to review the literature available on the use of nutritional supplementation for the management of canine skin diseases, critically appraising the clinical efficacy of such interventions and summarizing the current state of knowledge. This review highlights how these feeds can be considered useful in the management of dermatological disorders and outlines their beneficial effects in the prevention of dietary deficiencies and treatment of diseases, alone, or in addition to conventional pharmacological therapy. In recent years, nutritional supplements have found increasing potential application in veterinary medicine, and the scientific proofs of their beneficial effects are described in this review.

Functional foods and the urinary tract

There is no universally accepted definition of a commonly used term for a functional food: nutraceutical. For the purposes of this article, a nutraceutical is any ingredient found in foods that has a demonstrated (or proposed) physiologic benefit. Although a nutraceutical is generally taken to be an ingredient that can be isolated or purified from food, plants, or marine products and made available in medicinal form, this article also considers claims of benefit to the urinary tract for foods or food supplements in which the active ingredient has not yet been characterized or isolated.