Most respondents (83%) said that they treated dogs, cats, or both with fluoxetine. They received 127 completed surveys from small-animal veterinarians in the United States and Canada. The investigators recruited survey participants by email and at local veterinary meetings. “This study is an initial step in investigating the use of psychopharmacological drugs in veterinary behavior medicine,” they write. The authors note that studies of off-label veterinary use of fluoxetine and the dosage schedules prescribed by veterinarians have not been conducted. Investigators from Western University of Health Sciences College of Veterinary Medicine (Pomona, California) performed the survey to identify small-animal veterinarians’ prescribing habits for fluoxetine. Reconcile is approved for use only in dogs, not in cats, and its labeled dosage schedule is once a day.

A veterinary formulation of fluoxetine (Reconcile, Elanco Animal Health) was approved by the FDA in 2007 to treat canine separation anxiety together with behavior modification therapy.

Those who treated both dogs and cats with fluoxetine usually prescribed a generic formulation, and those who prescribed it only for dogs generally used a product approved for use in dogs by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).įluoxetine hydrochloride, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, is a psychotropic drug used to treat behavior disorders in humans and veterinary patients. Most survey respondents prescribed fluoxetine to be given once daily. Veterinarians use fluoxetine to treat a wide variety of behavior disorders in dogs and cats, according to the results of a 2013 survey published in Veterinary Record Open.

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