Cats on steroids...any input?

[macmtn]

So Kunani has had a cough. Its winter, woodstove is going and the mafia have been passing a cough around. Her favorite spot is on the pedestal under the stove…a built in heating pad that can accomodate 3 cats if they are friendly. Bought an air purifier in January and saw a big improvement in everyone’s coughing-including me.

Except Kunani, whos cough has just gotten worse, and has lost some weight. So we went to see Dr Evil (the cat’s description not mine) and after xrays and blood tests think she may have lung cancer. She is our breast cancer survivor, he thinks it might have been lurking. At the least she has lots of inflamation and some suspicious spots.
So she goes on cat steroids and revisit Dr Evil in 2 weeks. More xrays, more blood tests.

any one have experience on side effects?

[Zu_Zu]

• long term steriods can cause hair loss in cats

Jingles & AO for your dear cat ~ ((hugs)) for both of you

[SmartAlex]

Long term, my cat got diabetes. Vets said it was a known risk but they’d never actually seen it - translation: very rare.
We took her off them and changed her diet and she corrected.

[Gainer]

I have a cat that has had a depo shot every month for 3.5 years. There is nothing else we can do for her condition so it’s depo or euth.

So far, she is doing great! She has regained the weight she lost and is happy and energetic. We check her blood glucose monthly, but so far, no diabetes.

Now, most vets (including my own) would shudder with that level of steroids and rightfully so. It’s not at all recommended.

But, in your case, if it is lung cancer, the steroids are unlikely to do any real damage and will help her be more comfortable for whatever time she has left. I wouldn’t worry too much about side effects.

[eohippus]

I have a 16yo boy cat who has been on prednisolone for about a year now. 7mg every other day. Have not noticed any side effects. Vet said that cats can become resistant to steroid treatment over time. He went on it because of a weird irritation on one of his paws that biopsied as an atypical lymphoma. His paw condition has been pretty stable on the meds. He acts like a normal old cat otherwise.

[sascha]

I had one on pred for quite a few years. It did him no actual harm except that he was sure he’d not eaten since sometime last week. He was always a food pig anyway so it was a bit of a rough go to have him amp up the cries of “I’M STARVING” but he eventually got used to his feed schedule again. Oh, and the reduced amount of food too. That was tough, but he needed it to keep the pounds off.

Mine was on it for a skin condition. Cleared up the skin and his coat didn’t suffer one bit. We tried weaning him off a couple of times but the skin thing would just re-emerge in a new spot. It was better to keep him on the pred permanently.

[DMK]

About the only good thing about cats and their strange relationship with the same meds that people, dogs and horses can share is that cats do a lot better on long term steroids and have fewer issues than people, dogs and horses.

[Go_Fish]

I’ve got one, a stray I took in last summer, that’s been on prednisolone for about 6 months…7mg once a day. If we back her off to every other day, her symptoms reappear.

She has IBD, probably from a long-term internal parasite infection. We’ll never know for sure. She nearly died…it was really scary.

I’d be interested to hear about other people’s experience with long-term use of Prednisolone. My vet mentioned possible diabetes, but otherwise, the cat is doing well, considering everything she’s been through.

[syreino]

I don’t know if my Rhodes would be considered long term use or not, but I am sorry you have to deal with what we are going through - lung cancer. Rhodes is an intraoccular sarcoma survivor, and now we are dealing with lungs tumors (metastatic or unknown origin).

Rhodes was on prednisolone from Nov 2014 to June 2015 - she did fine, was hungry all the time (which at the time wasn’t good as she’s overweight and highly arthritic). It wasn’t seeming to help her IBS and arthritis, so we weaned her off it. She lost 2 pounds over the course of about 2 months, we did all the diagnostics and found her lung cancer. She’s not a surgical candidate (more than one tumor, etc), so they put her on Palladia at first (chemo pill), after a month of fighting her for her meds, and recheck to see that the tumors had not grown significantly the decision was to take her off Palladia and put her back on Pred. She’s doing better (appetite slightly better than on Palladia, but certainly not what it should be, but no longer fighting meds and is just “happier”) overall quality of life.

Oncologist wants blood work at least every 3 months on Pred (versus weekly on Palladia), when she was on it before from regular vet, bloodwork was very sparse. I believe the oncologist said that it can affect their liver (and kidney possibly?), more likely than diabetes.

A friend’s cat developed diabetes from pred, so I know it is possible (taking him off it did not resolve the diabetes), but I think relatively rare. We don’t go back for our next check up for another month, but so far she is relatively steady in quality of life and weight on pred, so worth it for us. We’ll reassess as needed.

Best of luck to you and Kunani from Rhodes and me…welcome to the terrible world of recurrent feline cancer…

[betsyk]

We have two with IBD/lymphoma, both have been on it for over a year, maybe closer to two, half a tab every other day. Seems to be working. Could we take them off such a low dose? we don’t necessarily want to find out, since it’s working. No side effects other than midnight munchies!

[macmtn]

Thanks to all for your info. So far, after one week, her cough is gone. Actully after 48 hrs her cough was gone, but didn’t want to jinx it. She always had a appetite and that has not changed. However, now I get a stink eye whenever I walk in a room with her. I am Dr Evil’s doppleganger

( kunani! Remember me…the human who cuddled you under the covers after your surgery? Made sure your happycat pain meds were always forthcoming? Fed you bits of veryspecialhuman food when your appetite quit? Gives you longrunning bellyrubs and chin scritches? Sigh…not trying to poison you)
we go back in a week for more tests

[McVillesMom]

I had a cat with lymphoma who was diagnosed and started chemo (including daily pred) at 10 months. He passed away when he was 12. Obviously over time we tapered his pred dose - I think at the lowest we had him down to 2.5 mg every other day - but he never developed diabetes or any other serious side effects. Cats tolerate prednisolone VERY well.