Rabbit losing weight

Question
Hi. I have a 71/2 year old desexed male rabbit, George. This past 6 months he has been losing weight. He was a 4 kilo big dutch bunny nd is now 3.22 kilo. He drinks a lot and urinates a lot but all in his litter tray. He is hungry all the time.
This year he has also had teeth issues and has had them shaved regular. so he had a urine test, blood test. The blood test came back as low white blood cells so he had a repeat test done. Still low. He also had an abdominal ultrasound. The vet said she thought there was something there. She has decided to give George a 21 day course o Bactrim and a ten day coure of Vibravet paste just incase the low white cells are because he is fighting infection.
The last resort is exploratory surgery but she really does not want to do this as it is very invasive. He is his normal happy self apart from this
Just wondering do you have any suggestions for us.
Thankyou so much for any help yu may be able to give.
Kerry.

Answer
Dear Kerry,

Did the vet do a complete blood chemistry in addition to the blood count?  If not, I would strongly recommend this.  Excessive drinking and excessive urination coupled with weight loss and wasting can signal renal disease.  In its later stages, this will show up as elevated creatinine, Blood Urea Nitrogen (B.U.N.) and other "off" values.  A urinalysis can also reveal problems, and is useful when coupled with blood work to check his kidney values.

Be sure you have an experienced rabbit vet who knows about rabbits and renal disease.  You can find one here:

www.rabbit.org/vets

Exploratory surgery would really be ill advised; I do agree with the vet on that! If the vet is not very experienced with rabbits, then the "something there" could be something completely normal.  And opening up a bunny for exploratory is something that experienced rabbits vets just *never* do unless it's a life and death situation.

I hope this helps.

Dana