Addison's Disease - New Treament with Zycortal - April, 2016

[Jo CIMDA]

To all who are managing a dog with Addison's Disease

Very shortly dogs with Addison's disease will have to be treated with an injectable mineralocorticoid called Zycortal.  This replaces the previous oral tablet, Florinef.

As this treatment is new to the UK, I would like to know your experiences with Zycortal, for example:

How much does your dog weigh, and what dose of Zycortal is given?
How often does your dog have the Zycortal injection?
How did your vet make the transition from Florinef to Zycortal?
How has your dog responded to the new treatment?
How easy or difficult was it to stabilise your dog? Note any clinical signs etc.
How often do you give prednisolone?
How much does this new treatment, and the monitoring of this new treatment, cost?

........and anything else that you consider to be of value to other owners of Addisonian dogs.

Your help to build up, and share, this valuable information is very much appreciated.

Many thanks

Jo

[Lovemedogs]

Hi Jo,
This topic has been raised for the last month now on the 6 different Addison's disease in dogs support groips I belong to, so I have written a Guide for UK owners to help them through the process, using information from various sources and also from the experiences of people using Percorten.
I have also been in touch with both Aspen Pharma who have taken over production of fludrocortisone and with Dechra who agreedto provide me with a statement that I could share on the forums I belong to.
Would it help for me to share all of this here ?

Pam

[Jo CIMDA]

Yes please Pam. 

Much obliged.

Jo

[Lovemedogs]

Hmm, it won't let me

Pam

[Lovemedogs]

Hi Jo,
I have just copied and pasted both documents into new threads.

One other very important thing when chaging over to Zycortal is to make sure the dogs starts off on the right dose of pred each day, with a view to lowering it at some point to the lowest effective dose as  eeds to hapoen with the Zycortal.

For each 0.1 mg florinef, there is the equivalent of 0.25 mg glucocorticoid in it. This table shows the comparison of glucocorticoids

Pam