Diagnosis? Help !

My vet is useless when it comes to rats (yes, I've tried them all in my area sadly) so I pretty much need to walk in there having a good idea of what my rats have and what meds they need. Now I am at a loss as of what one my males can have so I need help!

I first thought he had a UTI (red on paper) but was a bit baffled that he didn't seem in pain. The blood/porphyrin on paper was the first symptom and that was all for about 10 days before I noticed other symptoms, like if he had aged overnight. At the vet he got an x-ray, ultrasound of the bladder and urine culture. Bacteria was found in the urine so he's been on baytril for 10 days now. And it's not doing crap :/
On Sunday I started to feed him baby food because he had gotten so weak and skinny and that has perked him up a lot. Now I'm thinking maybe PT? His balance is defo gone (he fell a few times), it seems like sometimes he doesn't know where he is or where he's going, he also seems to have lost strength in his legs/paws (he's slow and can't even climb stairs) and he is still leaking porphyrin (what i thought was blood in the urine at 1st). But I haven't noticed any head butting or stiffness in the front paws. I can't do a "cheerio test" because he doesn't even bother trying to hold food at the moment. In fact he doesn't even attempt to eat solids if you hold it for him, even big time favorites. He'll put his teeth on it and as soon as he realizes it's hard, he just turns away. And since he perked up tons with the baby food, I'm thinking maybe mouth problems which would cause overall weakness?

I'm moving in 10 days to a bigger town so I hope to find a better vet there, but if it is PT is it even worth bothering? By then he will have had symptoms for a month or so. And what other than PT could it be?

Lets start with how old your boy is? can you get us a video? A lot of us will recognize neuro/PT symptoms from experience.

Hey ! He's getting old which is not making me feel very optimistic. He's turning 1y and 9 months in April (think he was born mid-July).
I actually managed to get him interested in a treat and there is 100% something wrong with his front legs so it's looking more and more like PT to me but I don't have any 1st hand experience with it. Here are 2 videos
Video 1
Video 2

I absolutely see PT. Do you know much about treating it?

Thats what I thought, thank you for your help. I have never had a rat with PT before no. I've read about steroids to maybe gain some time, but that it should be started asap and I can't get him anything until I've moved next week (it's just to see how many exams he got at my current vet over 10 days before he got some Baytril for what we thought was a straightforward UTI. There's no way I'll have them confirm and medicate a tumor by next week).
Anything else I can do to make him at least comfortable? I guess continue to feed him baby food? Or should I consider putting him down asap?

A steroid (pred or dex) will reduce inflammation and if the tumor is slow growing this will give him some good quality time .... possibly a lot of time, depending upon the tumour
An antibiotic, such as baytril must be given along with a steroid as a steroid will impact his immune system
You would give the steroid for the remainder of his life.

Depending upon the type of pt he has, bromocriptine or cabergoline may help, however there is no way to tell except by trying the med.
Bromocriptine can be hard on their systems and is less effective then cabergoline.

I am sorry, pt is horrible

Here are some links that might be helpful

http://www.ratshackforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1899
http://ratguide.com/health/neoplasia/pituitary_tumor.php
http://ratguide.com/meds/central_nervous_system_drugs/bromocriptine_mesylate.php
http://ratguide.com/meds/central_nervous_system_drugs/cabergoline.php

http://ratguide.com/health/basics/signs_of_pain_in_rats.php

You will want to give soft foods in addition to his regular food to ensure he is getting proper nutrition
Blocks made into mush by soaking them in cool water, organic soy infant formula thickened with baby cereal, etc
You may need to help him stay clean (check for penis plugs), help him eat, and modify his cage as needed
Enjoy the time he has left .... lots of cuddles etc

Many of us have had rats that developed pt so know that you are not alone and please share and ask questions

If you decide to have him put to sleep, please see http://www.ratshackforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7652

hope this info helps

Thank you so much for all the info ! I really really appreciate the help. Today I was travelling to another town so I took my boy with me and managed to get an emergency appointment with a vet that knows more about how to treat rats.
I now have galastop and prednisolone to give him and it's just to cross fingers it will help ! I think so far he's comfortable, he's really enjoying being cuddled and baby food is soooo good hehe.

Aw, I feel for you guys. I would add, check daily (look and smell) around the genitals. Your baby will no doubt be having difficulty cleaning down there and urine burn can be very painful and nasty. You may have to wash the area yourself twice a day.

Ratties love to be clean and it can really cheer them up to have some much needed help with bathing, even if they hate it at the time, they always look so much happier afterwards! I'm
Hoping you can get the right meds. Good luck.

Where are you? someone might have some carbergoline or bromo you can borrow till your vet can RX it. You would know within a 3 days if it was gonna help- I've had rats at deaths door that cabergoline turned around and gave many months to up to 1 1/2 yrs of quality life .

Diamondback can overnight with a vet RX either drug - If you go that route . I pay @ $20 month per rat the way they compound it for me.

A little update that Loki is thriving with the steroids He is feeding himself again, mostly wet rat blocks and he manages to go up stairs and into low hanging hammocks again. I even saw him hold some food in his paws today !

Downside is I think his old UTI is back, he was screaming every time he moved yesterday so I have him back on some Baytril I had leftover (the vet had not agreed to put him under antibiotics as a preventive measure). He seems fine today but I'll have to talk to the vet again.

It also seems that we might have to stop the Galastop (European brand name for Cabergoline for pets). What is available here is just waaaay too diluted (50 microgr/mL) so we need to give him 5 mL in one day every 3rd day. The most we've managed so far is between 1 to 2 mL in 1 day because we have to use so much food to hide the smell. 5 mL is just too much so we'll never manage to give him a decent dosage. The only way to get something stronger would be to get the human version of the meds and I highly doubt a vet is able to prescribe that :/

Overall though, everything so far is very very positive ! It's great to see him eat again, and I have been able to take him out again at night with his buddies on the bed. He's still not 100% but I know he will never be, so I'm content with him having a decent quality of life again. Let's hope it lasts !

Someone recently posted that their rat was doing well and on Cabergoline for a year.
They posted that they are giving 1/3 of the dose daily instead of the entire dose every 3 days.
They said that giving some daily was more beneficial to their rat

My vet prescribes human meds for my rats all the time (such as azithromycin and heart meds), he just phones in the prescription to a pharmacy and I go in and get it.

Oh that's great to know, thanks ! Will defo talk about these 2 options with my vet then - hopefully she can prescribe the human meds (then we'd only need to give him 1/4 of a pill!) or work with us to have a smaller dose everyday. It's crazy because that med smells nothing to us, but the amounts of food we need to use to make him eat it are crazy so it must stink to him ! Or maybe he's abusing our good nature to get more ice cream/baby food

Getting that amount of cab- or bromo into a rat is torture for you both ,
I am assume you are in UK?

If not our compounding drug store mixes the human pills at 1.72 mg/ml suspension ( or whatever the rat size is ) to make the dose 0.1ML which is easy to syringe.

Dose for the current rat on it (570 g) is 0.1 ML once daily
We use diamondback in AZ Now cost has increased alot in the 4 yrs I;ve been using them. a 200 day supply is approx $110 now.

Our rats seem to like savoy over sweet so they compound in a chicken flavor ,
But they all hate the med regardless. I've tasted and don't notice any after taste so not sure what the issue is , But Ive had remarkable success getting PT rats living good quality lives for over a yr min.

Hope you cam figure a better way to compound or have access to a compounding drugstore like this one

Best regards,
J and crew

maybe he's abusing our good nature to get more ice cream/baby food

Likely a combo of both - But we have never had a rat willing take it. This one we always have to syringe

I am in Sweden Pharmacies don't mix things like that here, but what I looked if we managed to get the human pills, his every 3rd day dose would 1/4 of a pill, so it should be very manageable for us to dissolve in water and make an acceptable dose. I agree we'll never manage 5mL, plus the vet version of that med is soooo expensive. It would cost me over 120$ a month :/

Aghh - I know when we first started cabergoline it was the vet RX and that amount sounds correct- Not doable - PT in humans has been in the news in the US of late, so I 'm thinking perhaps that its generic and price has gone down - There was a post back when I first started treating in 2012 where I though the 1/4 human dose was the 72 hr dose then suggested. Double check that. as compounding daily dose at 1/12th a pill would be very simple- Just get some math people here or your pharmacist or vet to explain it. Trying to make the end solution to 0.1ml . Here the pet pharmacy we use- Diamondback Drugs in the US would very likely be willing to talk you through the compounding via email or phone, That way if symptoms reappear which can happen you can easily double the dose . I'll try and remember to post the human and rat literature I found when I did all the PT research. Someone remind me if I forget. Its on my old computer but saved in some of my emails to a few rodent vets I emailed at the time.

Little update: the good news is we got the human meds so now his every 3 day dose is down to 2 drops. The bad news is he still will not take it, ugh !! I have even tried the smelliest cheese treat but no, he can tell those 2 drops are there. Any tips on how to force feed it to him? The cheese really was my joker card

Suzi13 said:

Little update: the good news is we got the human meds so now his every 3 day dose is down to 2 drops. The bad news is he still will not take it, ugh !! I have even tried the smelliest cheese treat but no, he can tell those 2 drops are there. Any tips on how to force feed it to him? The cheese really was my joker card

Click to expand...

Porridge (aka oatmeal). Honestly, it won't fail! Microwave the oats with water or non-dairy milk. Then mix in the meds. Oats are so creamy that even with water, they mask bitter tasting meds. You could mix those oats with poop itself and the rats would still gobble it up lol!!

Dairy will stop some meds from working so I wouldn't risk using cows milk. Oat milk is great.

If that doesn't work, you could try adding a couple of drops of strawberry quik, and thickening it with a bit of organic baby cereal ................. my rats think their meds are a treat but the strawberry quik is unhealthy so the oatmeal sounds so much better

Sadly I had to put Loki to sleep this morning He deteriorated very quickly since the weekend and by this morning he couldn't eat, drink, clean himself or even move really.
We had just started last week to force feed him the med when he went downhill a little since he still wouldn't take the med even with oatmeal, but it was probably too little too late. He did get about 3 extra months on the steroids alone, and was his old self for the vast majority of that time.

I am really happy that my Loki will have helped many ratties though, as vets here didn't know it was possible to treat rats with PT so Loki was a bit of a trial run and hopefully the next person to show up with a sick rat will not be told to put him down right away. I take comfort in that.