Hematuria ...caused by enterococcus faecalis.

Shop with us on Ebay
Advertise with us
Fins us on Amazon
The Rat Shack Forum

Help Support The Rat Shack Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
jorats

jorats

Loving rats since 2002.
Joined
Jul 20, 2007
Messages
45,196
Location
Northeastern Ontario
On Sunday, I doses all the rats at the Rat Shack with revolution. My Cande started to bleed when she peed. It was so bad, she became lethargic, cold and unresponsive. I thought I was going to lose her. I got her on Baytril asap and force fed her Ensure and kept her warm. Today she is doing much better.
My sister reminded me of April when she started to pee blood, I had just dosed her with Revolution as well. And now today, another rat is peeing blood.
I'm getting very worried... I checked and hematuria is not a side effect of revolution but this is is too much of a coincidence.
 
5 rats down and I've never had that happen. I've never heard on any of the boards of that happening, either.. Revolution is such a low toxicity treatment, which is why it's favored. Something like 10x the normal dosage for reactions to become severe? I can't remember off the top of my head.

I'm very glad to hear Cande's doing okay now. Keep us updated!
 
Is there any way you can get their blood or urine tested asap for kidney values? Have they ever been treated with ivermectin before?

There is a very rare intolerence to ivermectin (recognized in dogs) that could possibly be expressed when dosing with selamectin (Revolution), although you would have to give a relatively large dose. If they have been treated with ivermectin before, then this will not be the case as you have to give 3 xs the amount of Revolution as ivermectin to produce the same fatal results.

We had a tiny baby guinea pig die from organ failure after dosing with ivermectin and this was the only reason the vet could come up with for why it happened. Collies apparently are prone to this issue and should never be given ivermectin or Revolution for this reason.

However, if it were the intolerence to ivermectin/selamectin in this case, the blood in the urine would be an indication of renal failure so they would be in extremely bad shape. Since your one girl is doing better today, I would say it's a coincidence. The renal failure brought on by this intolerence to ivermectin/selamectin would likely be irreversable.

How much are you dosing?
 
The other two rats are mine. One is April, the new mom and Oscar, a rescue from the SPCA. April was dosed before we knew she was pregnant.
 
I've used Revolution before and this has never happened. But last Sunday, I dosed 74 rats, from three different households and using different Revolution, meaning, not from the same vial.
Unfortunately, my vet is out of town for another week. The good news is that Cande is doing much better. There's no blood in her urine now. Sophie stayed with her the whole time, kept her warm and clean, in fact, when my mom went to pick up Cande to force feed her, she came out big and almost charging, making sure my mom wasn't going to hurt her.
What ever it is... it's quite the coincidence. 3 rats all after being dosed by revolution. They did not have any ivermectin either.
I suppose the high numbers of rats we have, we are bound to see just about everything. For instance, mamarat had a rat have a severe reaction to Novotrimel/bactrim, his mouth and tongue swelled up 100 times it's size. He had to be pts.
We even had a rat with pox, which is very rare.
 
This is speculation: Any possibility that the three affected rats have an infection? If they responded to Baytril it could be the case. I realize that they are not even cagemates, which makes it a long shot.

If Myco can sometimes affect the kidneys or bladder (I thought that I read that somewhere), and if any stress can lead to a Myco flareup, then maybe the three afflicted ratties had been more stressed by the mites than the others for some reason.

I recall that when three of mine (they were cagemates and sisters, though) suddenly got blood in the urine they responded like magic to the max dose of Zithromax. They had been on a low dose of Zithro for URI, and they were too young for Baytril at the time.
 
My Cande is in top health and so's Louie. Cande is 19 months old and Louie, I believe is only 4 months old. But the fact that Cande responded so well to Baytril, would seem to indicate an infection, it does make sense that mites could be the instigator. But for Louie, a young strong healthy male, it seems unlikely but very possible. Louie is still peeing a lot of blood but he's in good spirits and active still.
 
The only two things I can see this being is an infection in all three rats, or a reaction to the selamectin. Either one seems far-fetched because of the probability factors, but as you said, with so many rats, "weird" stuff is bound to happen.

If it was the baytril that helped and not just time and general nursing care, it seems very unlikely that the Revolution was the cause, as any reaction to that would not be helped by antibiotics. However, because you don't know for certain, I wouldn't give them ivermectin at any point in the future just in case. If it was a reaction to the selamectin, giving ivermectin would surely kill them. It might be worth investigating another parasite treatment for these particular rats if you have to treat again in future.

I should say again, the reaction to the selamectin that we think was the cause of the little pig's death is extremely rare, never seen in guinea pigs or rats that I'm aware of. I don't think it's a high enough risk to warrant never giving ivermectin or Revolution again.
 
I just found my Boo this morning, he has blooding coming from his penis, just like the others. Of course, it can't be the Revolution, it's been almost a full week.
I did some research on hematuria and found Trichosomoides crassicauda (bladder thread worm).
I googled it but there's not much information on this parasite. It's species specific, usually no symptoms, mostly found on wild or lab rats not pet rats.
It says treat with ivermectin. I wonder if the Revolution might have had a hand in making the symptoms appear?
On the Ratguide, I searched hematuria and it came up with Trichosomoides crassicauda.
But when I research the bladder thread worm, it does not state that hematuria is a symptom, in fact, it doesn't state any symptoms.
I'm still waiting for my vet to come back from vacation. :(
 
If the bladder thread work is treated with ivermectin, then the Revolution would have only made things better, not worse, as it's such a closely related drug to ivermectin.

How much blood are we talking about? Is it just a smudge, or puddles of blood when he urinates?

Is this guy in a different cage from the others? Do they ever interact with each other?
 
On April 26th, we rescued Daizy and April. (live at mamarat's)
On April 27th morning, Daizy gives birth and we then did Revolution on April.
On April 27th evening, we found small spots of blood. I checked April and it was coming from her urethra so she was immediately put on Baytril.
On April 29th, Oscar (lives at mamarat's) never had Revolution bled profusely in his cage. He was never in contact with the rescues. We thought Oscar was going to die. (lethargic and cold) We couldn't find any marks on him, and it did not show that he was bleeding from the urethra. We figured he had hurt a toe cause the blood was just everywhere and it had healed up fast. Full recovery within 24 hours.
June 1st, Revolution on 74 rats.
June 2nd, found Cande,(lives at jorats) lethargic, cold and not eating. Lots of blood with urine. I had to change the napkins 4 times. She was put on Baytril immediately and did a full recovery after 3 days.
June 2nd-3rd, Louie (lives at mamarat's) lots of blood, not only urine soaked but if you would pick him up his penis/urethra would gush out blood. Put on Baytril, full recovery within 2 days.
June 4th, find Mielle (lives at jorats') dying. She is basically brain dead and has huge drops of dark blood coming from her urethra. She passes within a couple of hours.
June 7th, Boo (lives at jorats') has some very small amount of blood coming from his urethra. Not much at all. He's on Baytril now.

April was never in contact with Louie and Oscar. Louie and Oscar live together in the same cage.
Cande lives with Boo in the same cage. Mielle was in another cage.
My rats do not interact with mamarat's rats. But I do play with them. So I could have carried anything to the two.
Nicole's rats have had no hematuria at all.
 
This is really awful. I wonder if it would be worth a call to Debbie Ducommun? My only experience with hematuria was with three cagemates, and the Zithromax gave a complete recovery. We didn't do a culture, so never knew what caused it.

Would you be able to save a bit of Boo's discharge? It may be too late to culture it, because of the Baytril, but perhaps parasites (if any) would show up under the microscope?
 
If he's still bleeding by Monday, I'll give my vet a call.
I'm thinking of doing Ivermectin in a couple of weeks. That would take care of any parasites.
 
Since you have lost one rattie :sad3:
I wonder if all rats should be treated with antibiotics to get rid of whatever it is that seems to be spreading through them. Something to check with your vet.
 
I'm so sorry for what's happening Jo, and your losses. I don't know how it could be related to the Revolution - But just to be on the safe side if any ratties that were dosed have any upcoming surgery might it be safer to put it off for a while?

I'm sure there's no relationship but this brought to mind my StevieJoe. He was dosed with Ivermectin Sept 12, 19 & 26. He went for a neuter on Oct 26 (one month after the last treatment) and died right after coming home, the vet did a necropsy and said he bled internally but there was no surgical reason for it (tho I'm not sure I got the truth as he'd never done one the way he did this one before). A long time between medicating and bleeding, however, hearing of bleeding in relation to mite treatment brought this to my mind.

I hope you can get a certain answer from the vet that about what is occurring.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top