From:
magik87@dashmail.net
Date: 2003-01-10 02:29:08 UTC
Subject: RE: Epogen Shots Info Please!!!
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <27091817.1042165748102.JavaMail.root@scandium>
Author wrote:
> If you read my post of ferret update recovering from surgery I can get Epogen tomorrow for Cynder but I am not sure if this is ok! She was moving around more today this afternoon. Pred and hi-vite could be helping. The cause of anemia for Cynder is more than likely Lymphoma. So does anyone have any suggestions as to if I should try Epogen? Will it hurt to try it or not? I don't want to hurt her. Any information would be great!!! Someone posted it helped within 2-3 days for their ferret but gave every day for 4-5 days then other day then backed off to every other day then twice a week. I got something else where it was 3 times a week. If I do how much and often do I do this? Any suggestions or info will help. Thanks!! Joy
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Our Leo has an autoimmune disease that causes his body to destroy his red blood cells. With the first incident (his PCV was down to 15%), we started with Prednisolone and Hy-vite but after 2 transfusions he didn't start to recover until about a week into getting epoetin shots (.05 ml) every other day. This was slowly backed off and then stopped. The second incident (PCV down to 10%) happened after backing off the pred too much. Again higher doses of pred with Hy-vite didn't help. 3 transfusions didn't help either because he was bleeding out most of what went in. Again the epoetin thankfully made a difference going from every other day to eventually every 2 weeks and now he is off the epoetin and stable at 50% PCV.
The vet's main concern with giving the epoetin shots was the possibility that Leo could develop an allergic reaction to his body's own epoetin. But that didn't happen and Leo is with us today because of this medicine.
I would say that before Leo had a bone marrow biopsy we thought he might have cancer too and he was only 5 months old. The biopsy showed no cancer and a couple other tests by the pathologist led to the autoimmune disease diagnoses. Make sure you and the vet are sure of what is causing the anemia.
Tanya