For those of you that have treated melanomas with cimetidine, what dosage did you find most effective? I know there is powder available but I am trying to figure out most effective dosage cost (generally speaking, I know individual results will vary) whether it is by powder or crushed.
Thanks!
This makes no sense. Melanomas are cancerous not viral and it seems attempting to treat viral warts with cimetidine has risks that far outweighing the rewards. GET.A.VET.Please, it is obvious you want to take care of the horse and I wish you the best of luck once you get some professional advice.
Cimetidine is often used on horses with melanomas. A quick google search can pull up lots of studies. In fact there is a study going on in Florida now regarding melanoma in grey horses.
My vet said try it, she has horses that have shown improvement and some that haven’t so it is pretty much individual case by case who it works for but she said I may have to play around with it to find a dose that works for my mare.
So I posted to see who had results with it and at what dosage they found worked for them, and if there is any difference in affect using powder vs pills.
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OK the vet definitely knows better than I…my limited knowledge is that it had been tried on viral warts. Truly wish you the best of luck
What studies? I just did a “quick Google” and the first study I found, actual first hand report of the study, found no effect between controls and two different test protocol groups receiving cimetidine. The original study that vets have, in my experience, latched onto a bit, was of THREE horses. Really small n there.
If you want to do the cimetidine, which I have, go with a compounded pharmacy. It’ll be a lot cheaper. I’m not convinced it did anything for my horse’s melanomas. They didn’t grow much for a few years, then they took off. He was on cimetidine throughout. I think that that was just the natural growth acceleration of the melanomas, frankly. But I understand the desire to try something if there’s even a chance it will work, and there aren’t big side effect risks to worry about, which is good. We used a liquid, not pills or powder. Hope your horse does well.
https://irishvetjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2046-0481-66-22
http://www.ijvm.org.il/sites/default/files/evaluation_of_cimetidine_as_a_therapy.pdf
Cimetidine is a OLD treatment for melanoma. As in, it was common and accepted 20 years ago. I’m surprised anyone would express surprise at this use. Sometimes it helps arrest development, and sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s usually pretty cheap and easy to try.
I’m guessing that it’s use might stem from this paper published in 1990: https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/…ct/19912218485
There’s a dose there. It might be a good one to start with?
Good luck, @Chachie. I’ve thought about getting my grey mare on cimetidine. Let us know how it goes for you.
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I crushed 10 pills 3x a day for my horses treatment.
It cost quite a lot and that was the only result I had - out of pocket
For how long and what mg did you do?
OP Im sorry I cant remember exactly. Im pretty sure it was 3 months at least, and I cannot remember the dosage.
My vet actually recommended I did not try it, however a friend had good results with it halting growth of some of the growths she had on her horse. what i did discover was that mine were ulcerative and hers were the hard ones internally, im not sure if that made a difference.
OP, so sorry you’re going through the melanoma struggle. Recently started this battle myself and am actually pursuing the Oncept vaccine as I personally didn’t like the results of Cimetidine studies, both published and word of mouth from friends in the industry (vets and regular people).
We did start him on cimetidine to try to control growth until we can get our hands on the vaccine per the suggestion of my vet. He’s been on it for a month with no visible or measurable difference. His dosage is 2g, 2x a day of the powder. It cost $60 per canister which is only lasting about 2-3 weeks. Since my horse is ulcer prone anyway, I don’t mind paying for it for the time being but do not plan to continue much longer unless I see results. As soon as we get the first dosage of the Oncept he’ll be pulled off cimetidine anyway.
Good luck! Hope this works for you and your horse.
Its significantly cheaper there then. My 3mo treatment was over $500
