Dog Lymphoma Prednisone

Question
My dog has finally been diagnosed with lymphoma - swelling only on her neck and beginning on shoulders. She is a Golden Retriever about 75lbs. She was not eating and very tired and weak. The dr. put her on prednisone 10mg twice a day (total 20 each day). We began giving it to her Monday evening. She's had six doses and I'm also giving her a mostly meat diet with some vegetables and no grain. Just started her on k9 Immunity plus. Prior to this I was giving her essiac tea and IP6 gold (about 7 two times a day). After one 10mg dose her lymph nodes were half the original size and she is acting almost normal. Now the swelling is almost gone.
I heard that prednisone weakens the immune system and the way to fight this is to build the immune system. And I'm wondering if I should lower her mg. I called the dr. but he said to keep her on it. But I'm not sure this is the best thing as he is not a dr who is into herbs, vitamins, etc. I would like to taper it to the lowest dose possible so it doesn't weaken her immune system, yet keeps the swelling down. As I said, after one 10mg dose, the swelling was in half. Can I lower it to five twice a day or ten once a day and how would I go about doing it? I don't want to harm her. Thanks for any info you can give.

Answer

Hi RuthAnn,

Prednisone therapy is often a key component of standard treatment protocols for dogs with newly diagnosed Lymphoma. The main reason Prednisone is so widely used in cancer is that it can bind to lymphoma cell membrane receptors and trigger rapid tumor cell death.  It also dramatically reduces inflammation and fever caused by malignant lymphoma cells.

It's true that Prednisone does suppress the immune system, but it can also be life saving. For short term use, it's side effects are less common. It's not a drug to stop suddenly, your dog should be slowly weaned off of it, when your vet says it's time.

Fifty percent of dogs newly diagnosed with lymphoma will have dramatic lymph node size regression and improvement in symptoms after initiating treatment with prednisone. However, rather than stopping the Prednisone use, talk to your vet about common the multi-drug protocols, the survival statistics are better, than when Prednisone alone is used.

You may want to have your dog evaluated by a veterinary Oncologist. If your regular vet can't refer one to you, you might find one here:

http://www.acvim.org/websites/acvim/index.php?p=228

I hope I've been a help.
Best of luck,

Patti