From:
Sukie Crandall
Date: 2011-08-16 23:01:17 UTC
Subject: Re: [ferrethealth] Des as a form of chemical neutering
To: fhl <ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com>
Well, as Tressie said, the studies on humans are NOT consistent.
Plus, those approaches are very, very different from the ones for ferrets.
If you think about it: humans are among the very rare animals who are pretty constantly able and willing to engage in reproduction, with women having a roughly monthly cycle so the approach needs to be extremely different from preventing a seasonal reproductive cycle that is turned on by the day lengths becoming longer. With the seasonal animals you can affect the hormonal changes much earlier in their alterations.
So, it is not exactly like comparing apples and oranges. It's perhaps more like comparing apples and okra
Plus, it has to be weighed against other risks, the risks of continued heat, or pregnancy, or surgery, or even perhaps ones associated with the annual cycle itself.
As a result, rather than jump into worries from a comparison which does not work well, it is better -- as Danee said -- to let some of the vets comment.
There are people in other parts of the world with longer experience on this scare who also can teach us. In some places, like the Netherlands, this approach has been used for some time on quite a few ferrets and people have been good about publishing when things are learned, so I think we'd have heard if a worrisome increase in malignancies happened.
Let's see what is PubMed:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20081178
> Vet Rec. 2010 Jan 16;166(3):74-8.
>
> Comparison of four treatments to suppress ovarian activity in ferrets (Mustela
> putorius furo).
>
> Proháczik A, Kulcsár M, Trigg T, Driancourt MA, Huszenicza G.
>
> Faculty of Veterinary Science, Szent István University, István utca 2, 1078
> Budapest, Hungary.
>
> Twenty-five ferret jills were randomly allocated to five groups of five animals;
> they were treated either before the breeding season with 15 mg
> medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA), with 40 mg proligestone or with a
> slow-releasing device containing 4.7 mg of the gonadotropin-releasing hormone
> (GnRH) agonist deslorelin acetate (srGnRH), or at spring oestrus with 100 iu
> human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), or were left untreated and mated. All the
> ferrets were assessed for signs of oestrus and their ovarian response was
> monitored by individual faecal progesterone metabolite (P4-met) profiles. The
> mean (sd) durations of treatment-induced ovarian quiescence were 94 (18), 99
> (40), 53 (9) and 698 (122) days in the group treated with MPA, proligestone, hCG
> and srGnRH, respectively (P<0.001). Treatment with hCG and srGnRH proved to be
> the safest, while MPA treatment was associated with most side effects. Both MPA
> and proligestone treatments caused alopecia in one ferret per group, and after
> the first return to oestrus and mating an MPA-treated jill had a premature
> delivery and developed a purulent vaginal discharge. At the first post-treatment
> mating, the fertility (expressed as the percentage of ferrets mated in the group
> that produced a litter) was 75 per cent in the MPA-treated group, 60 per cent in
> the proligestone-treated group, 75 per cent in the hCG-treated group and 0 per
> cent in the srGnRH-treated group; in the control group, fertility was 100 per
> cent at mating in spring and 60 per cent at mating in summer. Three
> srGnRH-treated jills conceived at the second post-treatment oestrus.
>
>
> PMID: 20081178 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18439664
> Theriogenology. 2008 Jul 15;70(2):161-7. Epub 2008 Apr 25.
> Use of a gonadotropin releasing hormone agonist implant as an alternative for surgical castration in male ferrets(Mustela putorius furo).
> Schoemaker NJ, van Deijk R, Muijlaert B, Kik MJ, Kuijten AM, de Jong FH, Trigg TE, Kruitwagen CL, Mol JA.
> Source
> Department of Clinical Sciences of Companion Animals, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.
> Abstract
> Surgical castration in ferrets has been implicated as an etiological factor in the development of hyperadrenocorticism in this species due to a castration-related increase in plasma gonadotropins. In search for a suitable alternative, the effect of treatment with the depot GnRH-agonist implant, deslorelin, on plasma testosterone concentrations and concurrent testes size, spermatogenesis, and the typical musky odor of intact male ferrets was investigated. Twenty-one male ferrets, equally divided into three groups, were either surgically castrated, received a slow release deslorelin implant or received a placebo implant. Plasma FSH and testosterone concentrations, testis size and spermatogenesis were all suppressed after the use of the deslorelin implant. The musky odor in the ferrets which had received adeslorelin implant was less compared to the ferrets which were either surgically castrated or had received a placebo implant. These results indicate that thedeslorelin implant effectively prevents reproduction and the musky odor of intact male ferrets and is therefore considered a suitable alternative for surgical castration in these animals.
>
> PMID: 18439664 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
seem the more relevant
Sukie (not a vet)
Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
ferrethealth-digest@yahoogroups.com
ferrethealth-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
ferrethealth-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/