Porphyrin

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.

kimba337

New Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2020
Messages
3
Location
Victoria, Australia
We were told Ace had respiratory disease within about a month of having him. Since then he has been on and off doxy, and with that, in and out of sickness. Up until about three or four months ago, the doxy worked fine, until Ace got really bad and he wasn't responding to it. Through this forum, we learnt about Baytrill, and went to the vets, and they suggested it too, and it helped him get better, whilst still being on doxy. So now, Ace is stuck on Doxy for the rest of his life, and we give him Baytrill if he gets flair-ups. Usually we can tell when that is, because the first sign is that he starts to produce Porphyrin around his eyes (later he'll begin to make noises whilst breathing). About one and a half weeks ago Ace had what we thought was a flair-up, so for about a couple days we gave him one 0.25ml dose of Baytrill a day, and still on the usual Doxy twice a day. We realised something else was going on when we woke up to find Ace's face was puffy and there was an excessive amount of porphyrin around one eye, although the baytrill had reduced the puffiness and somewhat reduced the porphyrin, we decided to take him to the vets, where they said that giving him the Baytrill was the right thing to do, and that the Porphyrin was due to an eye infection because of one of four reasons. One being viral, as in caused by his respiratory disease, two was irritation, but the vet said that he couldn't see anything stuck in his eye, or any sign that anything had been there. Three was fungal, and four was cancer, but the vet also ruled that out, as there was no bulging around his eye. Although we got no clear, definitive answer as to what was actually going on, the vet told us to continue on with the Baytrill cycle for another three days. That time has passed, and for a day or two after we stopped the baytrill Ace had cleared up, but it is starting again, and just as bad as when we took him to the vets.

We've tried doing some research online, but it's really showing up nothing, apart from saying it can be caused by stress, illness or pain.

Around the time Ace had his supposed flair-up we brought in a new piece of furniture that they can crawl under, originally the vets thought that there was something under the piece of furniture that irritated his eye but since we shut off the area we are confused as to how Ace is still producing excessive amounts of porphyrin.
 
Hmmm I would've kept him on baytril long term and add doxy for flare-ups.
How long do you treat him with baytril when he has a flareup?
A bit longer than a week, maybe ten days. We'd never heard of Baytrill until we found this forum; the vets had only given us doxy, and suggested nebulising, but that took us a while to find the equipment, and they'd only suggested using saline solution, instead of mixing in any medication.
 
That could be your problem then. 7-10 days isn't long enough for any active infection. Its best to use a combo for 2-3 weeks (i would suggest 3 weeks since you have been through multiple rounds now. The shorter dosing may have tamped down the symptoms but not fully cured the infection so once you stop the baytril it comes back,
 
do you want me to double-check the dosages too? I would need the concentration (mg/ml) of each antibiotic, the weight of your rat and what doses you were told to give.
 
Back
Top