From:
dr_bruce_williams
Date: 2002-01-13 23:41:00 UTC
Subject: Re: proliferative bowel disease? other culprits?
--- In Ferret-Health-list@y..., "camshas" <grape_apes@h...> wrote:
>
> Anyway, Renate (means "reborn", FYI) seems to have a number of
> problems, not all of which we have solved, proliferative bowel
> disease among them. She has to go to the bathroom constantly and
> her trips are often unproductive of anything (we have ruled out UTI
> at the moment), though often it is. Her poops started out green
> (dark to bright and bright-orangey (like peach baby food-sorry),
> consistency of pudding, often foamy.
>
> A small mammal lab panel was not particularly revealing, though
> bloodwork and a UA have shown somewhat elevated white counts and
> occasional blood in the urine.
>
Dear April:
While the description of the poops sounds a lot like what you can see
in proliferative colitis, they lack one important finding - blood.
You also don't mention that she is painful on palpation.
Has a biopsy ever been done on her? That's an easy way to cement a
diagnosis of proliferative colitis - the lesion is very
characteristic and a silver stain will show myriads of bacteria in
the affected colonic epithelium.
I fear that with the poor response now to chloramphenicol (which
treats the condition very well) that you may be dealing with
something else entirely.
Bloodwork is generally not very helpful in cases of gastrointestinal
disease, so I am not surprised by that.
Rarely ferrets can get a syndrome much like spastic colon in humans,
or irritable bowel syndrome, which results in frequent poops much
like you describe, but without any visible inflammation. I had a
ferret that suffered from that for years - three colonic biopsies
over the course of a lifetime failed to demonstrate any hint of
proliferative colitis.
With kindest regards,
Bruce Williams dVM