Respiratory infection again, but new plan this time

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itsazoo

itsazoo

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Sep 9, 2008
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Location
, Saskatchewan, Canada
Some of youmay remember a couple of months ago our Peepers (Dwarf Hotot) had an awful RI that wasn't responding well to Baytril and improved only slowly with added chloramphenicol.But then shequit eating, drinking and pooping. We nearly lost her. Butour vetpulled herthrough.

So, fast forward to last week. Our main water line into the house blew, forcing Jenny to live temporarily on the main floor,Peepers' territory, much to Peepers' consternation. Stressful for all of us not having water for several days.

Late Saturday evening Peepers wasn't herself. Shestarted sneezing at first, and then shestarted having obvious trouble breathing. She scarcely moved or ate, and slowly deteriorated. Noticed she had a tiny cut on her bottom lip that was healing. We gave her some leftover chloramphenicol (realized after it wouldn't be good any more), hot water bottle, blankets, and steam (which she didn't care for).

So we planned to call vet Monday, but meanwhile I decided to do some research. I was not looking forward to the long slow process of antibiotic treatment and potential statis again.

So I learned a few things anddecided to try something different first. Monday morning I picked upa big bottle ofVetericyn and got a nebulizer from our pharmacist (at cost, he's awesome). Put a child's mask on the nebulizer,put it over Peepers' snotty nose as she breathed verynoisily. Couple of minutes later her nose cleared up completely and not a sound as she breathed. She decided the nebulizer wasn't so bad after all. A couplehours later, still clear and perking up.

I'm not silly enough to believe she's cured. She's starting to get a bit stuffy again now. But I am going to treat her with the Vetericyn and nebulizer for a while and see what happens. Not entirely sure what dose and how often, so will have to figure that out as we go along. I'm ready to call the vet the second we have any doubts about her progress. But seriously, so far, I'm amazed!

Oh, I did find in the toxicology information that Vetericyn VAPOUR irritated rabbit nostrils temporarily, but the droplets from the nebulizer are much smaller and seem to have no negative effects.

Before any of you freak out about this unconventional treatment, maybe weshould see what happens first. :)
 
Maybe your rabbit has developed allergies to something in your home. Maybe that is why she keeps getting these respiratory infections.
 
Or maybe it is too cold for her where she is at. I don't know I am just guessing at this. I hope that the treatment works for her. I hope she gets better!
 
Thanks. We hope so too. It's only happened twice, so hard to spot a pattern. Last time I think there was a bit of a draft in the corner her cage is in. The weather is warm now so I took all the blankets off from around it. Shouldn't rabbits be able to cope with minor temperature changes though? She has a cozy box to hide in if she thinks it's drafty.
 
Update: since her second treatment Peepers has been completely back to normal, eating voraciously as she usually does. She was once again trying to break down her door for her bedtime pellets treat last night. We interrupted her morning playtime to give her a couple of minutes of treatment, but she really had better things to do.

Now the conundrum is deciding if we should give her any more treatments. It seems far-fetched that a few minutes of Vetericyn delivered over a day and a half via nebulizer could possibly be enough. Especially after the many weeks of conventional treatment she had last time when she had the same symptoms.
 
itsazoo wrote:
Thanks. We hope so too. It's only happened twice, so hard to spot a pattern. Last time I think there was a bit of a draft in the corner her cage is in. The weather is warm now so I took all the blankets off from around it. Shouldn't rabbits be able to cope with minor temperature changes though? She has a cozy box to hide in if she thinks it's drafty.
Click to expand...

Some rabbits can acclimate to minor temperature changes others cannot. Sweetie's breathing starting popping like she had an upper respiratory infection. I put her in my room during the winter because it was warmer and she was better within a day. I just kept her and Prince in my room until the weather warmed up enough Sweetie could handle it. Now she and Prince are back in the rabbit area, been there since March or April.

It just depends on the rabbit.
 
That's interesting, Sweetie. I'm not sure where else we can put Peepers. We're pretty full everywhere with gerbils, lol. Will have to think about that.

Last time we did everything we could to make her corner toasty warm and non-drafty as soon as she fell ill, and it still took many weeks to recover. I put a couple of blankets back around her cage as soon as she got sick again, though it's summer now and temps are pretty comfortable in here.
 
We decided against any more treatments. Peepers seems to be the picture of perfect health. Nice having her getting into trouble again, lol. Tonight she was attacking a bag of puffed wheat I bought today and failed to put away properly.
 
That's interesting. I looked it up and it's mostly just sterile saline, with a little bit of a simple antimicrobial compound. We did similar treatments with Benjamin for sneezing related to pneumonia, nebulizing with sterile saline solution. Personally I would do it for 2 weeks, just to make sure it's totally gone. The vet told us to do 15-20 min once a day, every other day or every day for 2 weeks. Most antibiotic treatments are also a minimum of 2 weeks. This time period makes sure that it's actually gone.
 
You're right, it does need to be longer. Peepers started sneezing again after we stopped it. She's overall much better than before, still active and eating, not looking like a half dead bunny any more. But we will go longer now. Two weeks is probably right, whether she likes it or not. Still going by guess and by golly on how much to use but I guess we'll find out the hard way.

On the surface Vetericyn appears to be nothing more thanoverpriced salt water. I did some research on it and came out convinced it's much more than that. It's just hard to understand or explain in simple terms how it works. It has something to do with the body's immune system, neutrophils, and a lot of oxygenthat kills bacteria.


 
Well, as a biochemist, I can tell you that it's not just saline water. It has a small amount of some compounds added that have antimicrobial activity. The active ingredient in bleach, for instance, is one of them. This compound is a very strong oxidizing agent, which makes it very good at breaking apart bacteria and causing them to die. This same compound is made by activated immune cells to have the same protective effect. However, the concentration is really low, so I'm not sure it's very effective. It certainly can't hurt, so don't worry about the fact that a very dilute form of bleach is in there. I don't think it does a lot more than medical-grade sterile saline, but it is an easy way to get that. We had to get our sterile saline from the vet.
 
That makes sense. It's nice to have a product that's safe so you don't have to worry about animals licking it on woundsand coming to harm.

I noticed they make a stronger veterinary version and human pharmaceutical versions,with manystill going throughregulatory hoops for approvalaround the world.
 
Yeah, it is pretty safe stuff. I just don't like to see people call something a new wonder drug when it's really not anything new. They also charge tons more for it than necessary, which can be hard on vets who are trying to give good care at an affordable price, or shelter vets (I see a lot of this in volunteering and they complain about "veterinary fairy dust"-type products often). What you may find interesting is that all vet medicines have to go through the same safety and efficacy trials as human drugs. These are all based on having a totally new product. Veterycin may be running into issues convincing FDA that their product is totally new because the chemical compounds aren't, and some people who practice medicine of any sort have been using very dilute bleach in wound care for years.

Also, there aren't a lot of veterinary generic medicines. The cost of developing a generic medicine is less than a brand new one, but it is still not cost-effective for drug companies to do it in the vet field because the market is just smaller. So, vets often don't have a cheaper generic version of the drug available. They also run into issues because people are willing (understandably) to spend more on human health care for family members than they are for veterinary health care for pets. Few people have vet insurance, but they do have human insurance, so their ideas of what health care should cost are a bit out of line with reality because they don't often realize how much their own health insurance picks up the tab for their care. Vets have to go to 4 years of school and end up with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from that, just like human doctors, but they don't make a lot because they have to strike this balance between the cost of doing what needs to be done for people's pets and what people are willing to pay.

Sorry if that's more info than you wanted, I just find it interesting because I've thought about going into veterinary medicine and I talk a lot with vets. I also have a good deal of knowledge about human drug development from industry experience and classes. I find that kind of thing fascinating.
 
I remember looking into this product years ago when it was still something that had to be made shortly before use as it wasn't shelf stable. Hospitals were installing the machines to make it but had all sorts of trouble with the reliability of the mechanics, ifI remember right. It was also usedas a cleaning product.What's changed is theyfound a way to make it stable so it can be stored for longer periods. No change to the ingredients, just a newprocess to stabilize it. Even though it's patented, apparently they still don't want to give away the secret to how they do it.

I'm surprised at how quickly they're getting regulatory approvals, actually. They're just doing it individually for a lot of countries, and since it's a separate process in each, it can't be done overnight. Everything seems to rely on the labelling. Who cares about the product as long the label follows the rules, lol. So it ends up having a lot of different names and a lot of different instructions, but it's all the same product.

When my daughter worked at a pharmacy, we'd sometimesreplace expensive veterinary prescriptions with identical cheap generic human products. If the vet made a mistake, they'd send us off to buya generic at the pharmacy. The rest of the time they'd charge us massive amounts for the name brand unless we asked specifically for the generic.Going through all the regulatory processes to get them labelled for veterinary use obviously isn't worthwhile, for the reasons you mention. Exactly the same products though. Not all veterinary drugs are available as human generics, but many vetsdon't seem to beaware of how many are.

And not too much information at all... I find the topic fascinating too!

 
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