From:
AFERRETVET@cs.com
Date: 2001-03-26 18:07:00 UTC
Subject: Re: [Ferret-Health-list] Melatonin usage for adrenal
disease
More info on Melatonin:
Someone recently posted that Melatonin could make adrenal
gland disease worse if it was used for more than 4 months. This
sounded
strange to me, so I called Dr Joanne Paul-Murphy. She is the vet at
the U. of Wisconsin's vet school that did the study. She stated that
Melatonin did a very good job of reversing the clinical signs (i.e.,
new
hair growth, very thick "winter like" coats, and vulvas returning to
normal).
They also followed the blood hormone levels and ultrasounded the
adrenal
glands to monitor the size of the adrenal glands. The hormones were
indeed
reduced for the first several months, but with time they started to
go back
up.
The adrenal gland size wise did not reduce in size and some
continued to
enlarged. It is hard to tell if the adrenal glands were hyperplasia,
adenomas,
or carcinomas at the beginning of this study. (It takes a microscope
to make
a microscopic diagnosis.) One would not expect carcinomas to respond
to
medical therapy as well as adenomas and hyperplasias would. They
also did
a similar study with the monthly Lupron depot with very similar
results.
She did say the Lupron group had lower hormone levels and stayed
lower
for a longer time. They followed these ferrets for 12 months. During
the
12 month time frame, these ferrets had control of the clinical signs
and
had improvements in quality of life (i.e., good activity level, good
muscle
retention, etc.). She said that Melatonin is their third choice
(1-surgery,
2-Lupron, 3-Melatonin), It is also the least cost option for those
who can
not afford surgery or Lupron. They used a dose of 0.5mg per ferret,
orally at
night. I recommend a 1mg per ferret dose roughly 8-9 hours after
sunrise.
Hope that clears up the confusion,
Jerry Murray, DVM