From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2004-09-17 19:37:28 UTC
Subject: RE: Pred Tx
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <1428817.1095449848311.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
We had a one pound ferret who worked all the way up to getting 5 mg of Prednisolone a day (spaced over 3 doses per day) and got a lot of extra time with her meds. Granted, that is a very unusually high dose, but remember that she worked her way up to it so had a lot of doses far larger than your vet mentioned in between. She also had Diazoxide and for her last 3 months also dietary sugars added. Her alternative was to die so it was kind of a no-brainer for all of us.
In _Essentials of Ferrets, a Guide for Practitioners_ from AAHA Press by Dr. Karen Purcell this drug is listed (pg 33):
>Prednisone, prednisolone
>0.1 - 2.5 mg/kg q 12 - 24 hours PO
Diazoxide dosing is listed (page 29) as
>5 - 30 mg/kg q 12 h PO
I recall Dr. Katherine Quesenberry mentionig in a pers. com. to a vet of her's who is a mutual friend that the dosing of a drug (2 drugs?) in the original edition of _Ferrets, Rabbits, and Rodents, Clinical Medicine and Surgery_ wound up mis-printed but I can NOT recall if it was Pred, Lasix, or both.
In the later edition of that text Diazoxide is listed (page 443) as
>10-20 mg/kg PO q12h
and Prednisone/prenisolone (page 444) as
>0.5-2.0 mg/kg PO q 12-24h
So, the amounts are substantially higher than what you were quoted.
(A killiogram is about 2.2 kilograms.)