Survival Rate of Mycoplasmosis

Question
Hello,
I have a five week old blue rat, and when I got her last Wednesday, I noticed she was sneezing a lot. So I looked on the internet, and noticed there were a lot of cases of Myco showing up in Pet Store Rats (my rat is from Petsmart). I watched her for a few days, and just recently noticed that there was porphrin on her nose. So, I've decided that I would take my blue rat and the other two rats to the vet as soon as I can, but before I go, I was wondering if you could tell me what the probabillity of her survival will be. And also, is it okay for me to use children's Benedryl to help her with her symptoms for the time being?

Thank you for your time.

Answer
Hi Kara

Myco is a fairly complex organism !!

The good news is that because so much IS  known about myco since rats are born with it.
The best way to do  handle myco is to educate yourself  the best you can about it. From proper cage cleaning and using the right litter, keeping the cage clean and free of urine build up, feeding the rat proper diet that is low in protein and fats which keeps their immune system strong as well and avoiding contact with strange rats even if your friend has a rat. Forget ratty play dates. Buy a cagemate, properly quarantine him or her first and let your rattie have a cagemate.  This keeps stress down and stress weakens the immune system. Exercise daily in a safe rat proofed area also keeps the rat healthy and happy.

So you want to know about the survival rate?  This depends on your vet, to be honest. The vet needs to be educated in rat care and needs to know about mycoplasmosis. Vets that know a bit about rats  tend to think that all illnesses are myco and they all need treated with baytril and only treat them for 7 days. For starters, baytril is the drug of choice for myco because it lacks a cell wall and most antibiotics cannot kill a germ without working on the cell wall, but baytril and a handful of others can.                           
Using baytril is fine if the rat has myco, but if its a secondary infection a second drug should be used along with the baytril, namely a drug such as cefadroxil or keflex.  These drugs must be given for at least a full 30 days in order to really destroy the organism. If the vet only gives the rat enough for a week, this is not long enough and the rat  has a relapse and when this happens, the second attack can be worse than the first, leaving the rat with some lung scarring. The third attack can be the worst of all, which in turn opens the doors to chronic lung disease and deadly myco related pneumonia.       
Here is a link to my website and to the page I wrote about mycoplasmosis.

http://www.freewebs.com/crittercity/mycoplasmosispage.htm

Read over it so you can get a better understanding on how the disease works. Also, if you need a vet, check out the page on finding the right vet for your rats.


Hope this helps!