mammry tumors in rats

Question
QUESTION: I recently took one of my older female rats in for removal of a very large mammary tumor. She is recovering nicely. Just a week ago, I noticed that another female has a small tumor in the same location, about the size of a small grape. Just today, I detected a small mammary tumor in yet another female!(I have four older females). It was very difficult to cover the cost of surgery for the first female and now I am faced with the same predicament , only doubled ! I have read that there has been success in using Lupron to halt the growth of mammary tumors in pet rats. How expensive is this drug ? Would squalamine or tomoxifen work as effectively ? I'm just wondering which drug to go with and find out what the dosage would be for my rats. I would greatly appreciate any and all info that you can give me. Thank You.

ANSWER: Hi Beth


Oh the joys of mammary tumors!!  One reason I own all males is beccause of the expense and the heart break of losing my girls to these nasty things.   I am not sure if you read about lupron on my site or not, not many sites talk about its use in rats yet but I was curious who else also talks about its use other than myself and possibly a few other people.

The best way to avoid these nasties of course, is to spay at a young age (3 to 4 months old is ideal) with the surgeon being very experienced with rats.  Although spaying several females is costly, so is having tumors removed on several girls later in their life and of course, they come back and you do the surgery once again, and they come back and of course you say ENOUGH!! And this is when the rat surrenders to the tumors after a time and passes away.
Some rat keepers are deep into natural remedies but I have yet to see any documented proof that it works.

As for tamoxifen, it is a great drug, used of course with great success in treating women with breast cancer and also is now being used in rats with mammary tumors. However, it wont work unless the tumors are malignant. You would need a biopsy to know for sure if the tumors that you are treating are indeed cancerous.  Chances are they are benign. Most mammary tumors are benign.

Lupron is used to shrink mammary tumors as well. Now,it has been used both on cancerous and benign tumors too and has been successful in halting the growth of some tumors and totally shrinking others.

Lupron is given once per month. Its hard to say how much it costs because every vet is different. I know its pricey to get the bottle into the clinic if the vet doesnt carry it (several hundred dollars) but the vet should of course not charge you for that, just the single monthly dose which is done by injection and goes by weight. I paid $35 per month for my one girls injections.  The tamoxifen is NOT really expensive, again, depending what you call expensive. Example: I would pay $100 for a pair of great jeans that did wonders for my uh....what do these "kids" call it these days..a "caboose" ??  BUT...I would never pay $500 for them.  THATS EXPENSIVE!  Nice caboose or not! LOL
I dont handle the billing/pricing at the clinis so I am not sure exactly what it costs but if I recall from my own rats being on it, I paid around $25 for a 2 week supply.  Also, sometimes the vet uses a regular pharmacy and you simply go there and pay for it so the prices also depend on what the pharmacy charges. That is when it would nice to have the rat go on insurance.  I DIDNT SAY THAT!   LOL

You can read up more about mammary tumors and treating them on my website.  Since working here on this site, I have found that people tend to ask the same thing about their rats, from tumors, respiratory issues and shy or scared rats...and I have learned what people are looking for and what they are hungry for as far as answers go. So, I changed my website around to accomadate rat owners and have made sites focused on just one ailment per page, devoting much more time to explain things and describe things much better.
There are a few photos too of ratties with tumors. One picture will probably make you really angry when you see it and you may wonder how the tumor grew to that size without medical care, which I asked the same thing to the owner the photo. The tumor grew like crazy to be the size of a small grapefruit and this little rat still got around like a real trooper!  I figured I would answer your question about it before you even saw the photo because I am sure you are going to be shocked when you see this photo!


Hang in there and keep me posted and of course, if there is anything else I can do for you, please feel free to ask anything you need to know. I will try my best to help. Also, forgive the bad spelling. The spell checker is not working right for some reason and I know there are plenty of misspelled words because I see the RED LINE under the words.  LOL

Talk soon!

Sandy

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Sandy,
Thank you so much for such a quick and thorough response. Now that I think about it, I believe I did get the Lupron idea from you! Wow! I have done so much research in the past few months just trying to learn, understand and find suitable cures, if any.......It's becoming difficult to remember what info I got from where ! Does Lupron only come in an injectable form ? Are injections the only way to administer it ? Just curious.....Do you know much about squalamine ? I have been reading up on this and thought it was promising enough to look into further. Of course, many of the medical website articles are unavailable to me because I am "not authorized". But I am open to any and all ideas whether they be for animal use, human use, synthetic, organic, etc. ( As long as it is NOT illegal!LOL ). I appreciate your time and concern and I feel that your knowledge and experience will be of great value to me in the future. Luckily for you, I am not an educator, so a few misspelled words do not bother me...I'm sure you'll find some on my end as well. Thank you so much, Sandy !

ANSWER: Hi Beth


Ok I am going to SCREAM!!!!!!

I just wrote this huge post and stupid me pressed the space bar and
POOF! GONE!

So before I forget the topic at hand, here goes:

Lupron: Is available in injectable form only and is dispensed only once per month and tamoxifen is oral only, given daily.


As for squalamine,I have no idea about it, I just looked it up after you told me about it. Interesting though, I will read some stuff on it myself too and let you know my thoughts. I live for this stuff! LOL
I do know that some vets use steroid therapy after tumor removal in hopes of shrinking any new tumor growth but it really has not be super successful. In fact its not even the best route to take since steroids can compromise the immune system and cause secondary infection. It almost defeats the purpose.

I cant remember if this was even brought up, but is your current vet a board certified exotic vet or just a vet that has exotics as a special interest and willing to be open to outside advice and ideas?



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Sandy !

You have awesome response time ! I have to work hard to keep up with you (which is really great to know when you have a very ill rat !). Thank you, again, for your rapid reply. I have never really checked on this vet's credentials as I was desperate to find a "rat friendly" vet in a pinch (My regular vet does not treat exotics of any kind, but he is absolutely wonderful with my 5 dogs and cat). I do know that Dr.Julie Peters is open to outside suggestions as she asked me to research the name of this drug that everyone was having success with when I told her about it(Lupron). I can find out this info for you and get back with you on it. I was very saddened by your story of FUGS........He was absolutely adorable ! It is heart breaking to hear about such a tragic outcome to a common procedure. What's worse, in my opinion, is that the vet didn't even consider addressing your concerns...even with your experience ! What about your "knowledge" of his personality, behavior and symptoms ? Just like a mother, you know your child well. It's completely asinine that this vet did not take you seriously and just fluffed you off. Did you receive solid evidence from the autopsy that showed internal bleeding ? Did you have any legal grounds for restitution ? It is just a shame that a trained vet would not place a higher value on life, even if it is a  small rodent. You have my sympathy, Sandy......Thank you.

Answer
Hi Beth

About Fugs:  The vet told me to leave animal medicine to HER and she was the one with the degree on her wall, not me.  Yes the necropsy showed solid evidence that she did not properly clamp a major vessel and other medical mumbo jumbo but it would have been a real expense to go to court and probably have gotten me nowhere. She would not lose her license over a rodent, sad as it sounds. She did, however, have her wrists slapped by the NC Board of veterinarian medicine and she was told to remove any signage that suggested she was an exotics vet. You see, when you see in the telephone book that a vet sees DOGS CATS AND EXOTICS and there may be a small bio about the vet saying that they graduated from XYZ college of veterinarian medicine and holds a special interest in small animal surgery and exotics, that may lead you to believe they are exotic specialists. Not so.  WHat it means is she has a special interest in surgery in small animals which right there makes a rat owner think they mean RATS but in the vet world a small animal is a dog and cat rather than a horse etc... follow so far?  Next, when it says they have a special interest in exotics, this means also that they know A LITTLE about small mammals. Small mammals are your rodents or lagomorphs or ferrets but in no way does it mean they are board certified in exotics. To be board certified this means the vet graduates and goes on to further education in a class by itself which in the US is mainly avian but they throw in small mammal medicine too.  This is a totally different class of vets and in fact there are only a few hundred in the world.  In NC alone (where I am) there are only 13 board certified exotic vets. California, one of the largest states aside from Texas has just 43 exotic vets yet everyone with a rat thinks their vet is an exotic vet.  
So anyhow the vet that killed Fugs had to get rid of anything that implied she took care of exotic vets and had to figure out a different way to advertise.  
She left that practice not long ago and is in another practice now and lo and behold it says that they see dogs, cats and exotics and her name is on the vet list. I was P'od and I am going to call on her again.  She has NO RIGHT to use that title.

Hope I didnt confuse you.