From:
Gail Burlaka
Date: 2002-01-14 11:37:00 UTC
Subject: [Ferret-Health-list] Re: proliferative bowel disease? other
other culprits?
Dr. Williams: I had a ferret last year, 1-1/2 years old that we treated for
eosiniphilic colitis, which was documented by pathology report. We were
treating him with everything - one day he was fine and the next day I
thought he was dead & had to give fluids, force feeding, etc., and the next
day he would jump the gate. When we finally opened him up, he was full of
it - it had gone from the large intestine to the small intestine and had
eosiniphilic lesions on his liver and a mess. We finally put him down. His
"poopies" were normal at times and then were like lemon jello and then to
strawberry jello (with blood stains). The pathologist said the outlook was
next to nil - that he probably wouldn't live to be 2. What is the
difference between eosiniphilic colitis and proliferative bowel disease?
Also just heard from a friend of mine that a pediatric physician up in MA
also had a ferret with the same thing.
----- Original Message -----
From: "dr_bruce_williams" <bruce.h.williams@h...>
To: <Ferret-Health-list@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2002 11:41 PM
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
>
>
>
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