Message Number: SG9477 | New FHL Archives Search
From: Sukie Crandall
Date: 2004-07-07 23:52:20 UTC
Subject: cystine bladder stones (protein)
To: ferrethealth-owner@smartgroups.com, ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-Id: <AF74D80D-D070-11D8-9014-000A95CD182C@mac.com>

It turns out that the ferrets here had cystine stones.

Our vet has one of the meds used by Amy:

>> Tiopronin
>> and
>> Policitra-K,

>> and she lived another six years.

and he'll look into the other med with which he isn't familiar so any
info on Tiopronin would be appreciated and I'll seek more, too, but
help is always welcome.

Hilbert has begun passing blood in his urine again so he is going in
and will have a culture and other meds started up tomorrow.

Yes, there IS apparently, such a such a thing as too much protein in
the diet for ferrets!

I used to wonder about the repeated reports of bladder stones from
Britain if there were undiagnosed cases of adrenal neoplasia since vets
weren't as used to looking for that over there, and there may be some
of that, but many people there also feed a very high protein diet so I
am curious about what types of stones those people found.

Cystine are the harder type to deal with and less common in the U.S.;
in fact, bladder stones have been quite rare in the U.S. so in 23 years
with ferrets in the family we haven't had any till now.

(BTW, a human urologist friend told us that a trick similar to the
repeated cystos which our vet successfully used for Hilbert the last
time a few weeks ago is at times used in humans to give a urethra time
to rebound.)