From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2004-02-20 20:19:21 UTC
Subject: RE: adrenal recurrence
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <2562096.1077308361040.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
We have had a household rate of adrenal neoplasia in maybe 30% of the ferrets here. (I'll have to rerun numbers at some point. Only a few have had a second gland affected. All of our ferrets, no matter the source) have been early alters except one female, a retired breeder. Of those extremely few who have had a second adrenal gland involved, only one arrived in our household at an early age (i.e. before an estimated 4 to 6 months of age).
We are careful to provide a lot of complete darkness, and this Spring we've been planning to try a Springtime very low level Lupron shot for each normal ferret. As I understand it, the point of that is that it fools the body into thinking that it is whole but hormonally "satisfied" (I know there has to be a better way to put it but just can't think of one right now) due to the timing. Humans are unusual in having year-round fertility; most animals (including ferrets) have sexually related hormonal fluxes only under specific conditions such as the on-set of Spring. Ferrets respond to the change in photperiod (increased light).
Doctor Jerry Murray (Use AFERRETVET in the "from portion of the search) has a LOT of past posts in the FHL Archives on why some hormonal loops may self-perpetuate in ferrets who have been sterilized and why darkness, melatonin, and Lupron may help prevent later adrenal occurences., and I recall some excellent posts by Mike Janke also but don't recall if those said "mjanke" or "mfjanke" in the addies. I'm sure there are more.
Whole ferrets do get adrenal neoplasia and Dr. Ruth Heller has written of encountering it in a young whole ferret. It would be good to have firm numbers which compare whole with sterilized and related those to the proportion of each in the population.