Immediate Help Requested re. Azithromycin (Zithromax)

[MMasters]

I have a 7 year old sheltie bore, who was born in my home. A month ago, he acquired a respiratory infection. I gave him batril for a week, no improvment, so switched to doxycycline for a week. Then, I ran out of doxy, so put him back on batril. He's still alive, but not getting better. I read somewhere that zithromax is the "big gun" for respiratory infections if the other meds don't work.

QUESTIONS: Is zithromax an injection or oral? What is the dosage?

I may ask the vet to do a culture to rule out mycoplasma pneumonia (cure for that is cloramphenicol).

However, I want to try zithromax right away because cultures take time.

TEAS, if you see this, can you please post a reply? Of course, everyone with experience is welcome to reply and I appreciate all your help!

 

[Princess Dustmop]

Switching back and forth between antibiotics based on what you have on hand is not a good idea. Courses of antibiotics that are too short can create resistance to a drug that the bacteria would have otherwise been sensitive to with a long enough initial course. If you don't have enough of an antibiotic to complete the full course, you should let your vet know that you are running short, so they can arrange a refill.
Your vet can give you a prescription for the proper dosage for antibiotics for your guinea pig. I have included a table in which Merck lists the typical dosages for different antibiotics in guinea pigs, including azithromycin. (Zithromax is a brand name form of azithromycin made by Pfizer.) As stated in Merck's terms of use, this is merely a reference and not a substitute for actual veterinary care. The table is showing an oral dosage for azithromycin (indicated by "PO" in the dosage column, which is short for per os, which is latin for 'by mouth.' - I'm is intramuscular, and SC is subcutaneous.)

 

[Wiebke]

I have a 7 year old sheltie bore, who was born in my home. A month ago, he acquired a respiratory infection. I gave him batril for a week, no improvment, so switched to doxycycline for a week. Then, I ran out of doxy, so put him back on batril. He's still alive, but not getting better. I read somewhere that zithromax is the "big gun" for respiratory infections if the other meds don't work.

QUESTIONS: Is zithromax an injection or oral? What is the dosage?

I may ask the vet to do a culture to rule out mycoplasma pneumonia (cure for that is cloramphenicol).

However, I want to try zithromax right away because cultures take time.

TEAS, if you see this, can you please post a reply? Of course, everyone with experience is welcome to reply and I appreciate all your help!

Hi

Switching between lots of antibiotics is not helpful at all. Please always contact your vet in time before a course runs out and there is no improvement.

Zithromax is an oral veterinary medication. You may have to discuss with your vet what brand and form is available for you in Finland and whether it is appropriate to give it a try. It is a very strong last ditch antibiotic that can come with side effects; including total loss of appetite.

PS: We kindly ask our members to please not use upper case letters in titles; it makes them very difficult to read in our alerts whenever we come on and achieves the opposite of what the poster wants when we look through any new posts.

 

[MMasters]

Hi Princess & Webke,

First, thanks for letting me know about caps in titles.

Secondly, thank you for the info about Zithromax. The reason I learned not to continue an antibiotic that didn't show improvement was the hard way. In 2018, my best longhair girls had really beautiful babises. But one by one, they got sick. The standard baby treatment is 1 drop trimethylprin sulfa twice a day. Well, one baby died after 8 days and then another one. Then, there was a litter of triplets and a litter of twins. One of the twins was holding on and I was handfeeding milk supplement several times a day because both mothers - who were good milkers - didn't seem to have enough. Eventually, I took one of the twins to the veterinarian because the babies were still losing weight. I asked him if the TMS were the wrong antibiotic. He said it looked like the baby would be getting better. I should have put my foot down and insisted, but he had been my vet for 15 years!

To make a long story short, I lost all the babies and sent one to the university lab for a full necropsy report. It came back bordetella septicus. It turns out that bacteria has developed a resistance to TMS!

So, if the vet had changed from TMS to doxycycline when I asked about it, the babies could probably have been saved. Not only that, because none of the adults had any immunity to bordetella, I lost some of them as well.

Since then, I've been very cautious. If I don't see any improvement within 3 or 4 days - or worse yet, weight loss and more bad symptoms - I will add a second antibiotic and wean off the first one. Here in Finland, vets are reluctant to prescribe batril and doxy concurrently, but it is a common duo treatment in the UK.

Fortunately, at the university we have a guinea pig expert from Brazil. So, I will forward the thoughtful, informative reply that you so kindly wrote and ask his opinion. The boar is eating a lot and he show improvement until I ran out of doxy. The batril is doing something because he's not gotten any worse - he's stayed the same. My guess is he will want to continue the batril and add the doxy back in. It worked when we realized that the adult guinea pigs had also been explosed to bordetella, otherwise I would have lost all of them!

 

[Wiebke]

Hi Princess & Webke,

First, thanks for letting me know about caps in titles.

Secondly, thank you for the info about Zithromax. The reason I learned not to continue an antibiotic that didn't show improvement was the hard way. In 2018, my best longhair girls had really beautiful babises. But one by one, they got sick. The standard baby treatment is 1 drop trimethylprin sulfa twice a day. Well, one baby died after 8 days and then another one. Then, there was a litter of triplets and a litter of twins. One of the twins was holding on and I was handfeeding milk supplement several times a day because both mothers - who were good milkers - didn't seem to have enough. Eventually, I took one of the twins to the veterinarian because the babies were still losing weight. I asked him if the TMS were the wrong antibiotic. He said it looked like the baby would be getting better. I should have put my foot down and insisted, but he had been my vet for 15 years!

To make a long story short, I lost all the babies and sent one to the university lab for a full necropsy report. It came back bordetella septicus. It turns out that bacteria has developed a resistance to TMS!

So, if the vet had changed from TMS to doxycycline when I asked about it, the babies could probably have been saved. Not only that, because none of the adults had any immunity to bordetella, I lost some of them as well.

Since then, I've been very cautious. If I don't see any improvement within 3 or 4 days - or worse yet, weight loss and more bad symptoms - I will add a second antibiotic and wean off the first one. Here in Finland, vets are reluctant to prescribe batril and doxy concurrently, but it is a common duo treatment in the UK.

Fortunately, at the university we have a guinea pig expert from Brazil. So, I will forward the thoughtful, informative reply that you so kindly wrote and ask his opinion. The boar is eating a lot and he show improvement until I ran out of doxy. The batril is doing something because he's not gotten any worse - he's stayed the same. My guess is he will want to continue the batril and add the doxy back in. It worked when we realized that the adult guinea pigs had also been explosed to bordetella, otherwise I would have lost all of them!

All the best for your poorly boy.

 

[MMasters]

All the best for your poorly boy.

Thanks. The vet prescribed the doxycycline and she will do a culture to send to the laboratory. Then, we will know for sure what the cause is. In the meantime, the boar is hanging in there, he eats a lot, and his girlfriend allows him to sit really close to her. Both guinea pigs are way too old for her to get pregnant. The female guinea pig is 8 years old, chubby, and her fur is still exceptionally thick and nice. She has been really taking good care of the boar, like a mother would care for a baby, and I think this is helping his recovery.

 

[Wiebke]

Hi

Are you aware that there is no menopause for guinea pigs of either gender and that both genders can reproduce right to the end of their lives?

I have personally known a 9 year old sow in my close childhood neighbourhood that fell pregnant when housed together with an older boar during a summer holiday - with fatal birthing consequences for her and her baby. We'd holiday boarded her in the previous year (thankfully separated from our own similarly aged boar).

 

[ScrufflesRules]

As Wiebke says above, guinea pigs are fertile until the day they die. If the boar hasn't been neutered (I'm assuming he hasn't), they need to be separated immediately otherwise things could end tragically.
It would be wise to put the female on pregnancy watch for the next 10 weeks too.