Exploring pet owners' attitudes toward compounded and human approved medicines: a questionnaire based pilot study

With the growing global pet population and increased spending on veterinary care, compounded medications offer customized, often more suitable and affordable treatment options compared to the limited available veterinary medications. This research aims to understand pet owners' attitudes towards compounded medications, focusing on their challenges and needs. A total of 300 respondents from the territory of Novi Sad, province of Vojvodina, Republic of Serbia completed the questionnaire, through face-to-face interviews at veterinary clinics. Pet owners stated that the majority of companion animals were dogs (66.7%), followed by cats (22.8%). A significant portion of them received medication in the past five years (70.7%), while nearly half of them were human-approved (47.9%) out of which more than half (55%) of the pets received antimicrobials for systemic use. Although the majority of pets did not receive compounded medication (79.8%), respondents believed that both they and their pets would benefit from it. Only small fraction of respondents knew that local pharmacies had the ability to compound medications for pets (14.5%). In the era of personalized medicine, compounded medication for specialized needs play an important role providing optimum therapy for veterinary patients. However, limitations persist, including variability in formulation quality, limited regulatory oversight, and challenges in ensuring consistency in potency and stability, as well as decreased efficacy for certain drugs and the challenges related to the lack of pharmacokinetic data for some administration routes. By customizing treatments for individual veterinary patients, we can optimize antimicrobial use, reduce the selective pressure that drives resistance, and enhance patient outcomes, while acknowledging the need for careful oversight and quality control in compounding practices to ensure safety and efficacy.