Category: Frequently Asked Questions

In veterinary medicine the death of an animal patient is often thought of as the end of a medical case. However until a thorough post-mortem examination is completed, the case is not closed. In fact, the post-mortem examination (autopsy, necropsy) is a very useful and necessary procedure in the diagnostic process as it often defines the cause of death. Why do a post-mortem examination? A good post-mortem has five benefits: Benefit to the owner/breeder: It may reveal deficiencies in husbandry practices which can be modified or corrected. It may reveal hereditary and/or congenital (birth) defects which may influence future breeding...

As you come in the door that afternoon you know something is wrong. Your 3 month-old Shar-Pei pup is not at the door to greet you. You search the house and find him in the family room huddled in the corner, ears down, tail limp, droopy eyes, breathing heavily and coughing softly. He feels warm to the touch. His temperature is 104°F and you know you’ve got trouble. The scenario above is pretty typical for pneumonia in the Chinese Shar-Pei. It often occurs in pups 8 – 16 weeks old and seems to come out of nowhere. The only specific...

In veterinary medicine we are limited in the number of oral pain medications we can use for control of pain. NONSTEROIDAL ANTI-INFLAMMATORY DRUGSor NSAID’s include two distinct subclasses: the carboxylic acids and the enolic acids. The carboxylic acid group can be further subdivided into the salicylates, proprionic acid derivatives and fenamic acids. ASPIRIN, a salicylate, is a very common, mild analgesic (pain relieving) medication. It is useful for the low-grade pain of arthritis and minor trauma. It is available over-the-counter and is inexpensive. IT IS TOXIC IN CATS! The most common side-effects are gastrointestinal irritation. NAPROXEN (Aleve®),IBUPROFEN (Motrin®, Nuprin®) and...

Gastroenteritis “Gastroenteritis” specifically refers to inflammation of the stomach, small intestine and large intestine without diagnosis of the cause. Most often this condition is caused by changes in diet whether intentional or unintentional, bacterial disease, viral disease, parasites, medical diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease or other conditions, toxicities, etc. The most common cause is changes in the diet and is usually seen as colitis which typically has clinical signs such as loose, cow-pie stools, mucous (“slimy stools”), straining to have bowel movements with little or no stool (tenesmus), blood in the stool (hematochezia), having frequent, small stools and house-broken...

Medial Luxations Often these are termed “congenital” due to the fact they occur early in life and are not associated with trauma. Luxation may not be present at birth but the anatomical deformities that predispose to these luxations are present at that time and are responsible for later problems. The occurrence of medial patellar luxation is characterized by: Coxa vera — which is a decreased angle of inclination of the femoral neck. Genu varum — in which the distal third of the femur is bowed medially. A shallow trochlear sulcus with poorly developed or absent medial ridge. A hypoplastic medial...

      The kidneys consist of millions of nephrons in each kidney. A nephron has a filtration unit called teh glomerulus. Here there is intimate contact between blood vessels and the kidney cells which allows the exchange of waste products or protein metabolism from the blood to the urine. We routinely measure some of these waste products in the blood called the BUN and the Creatinie. From the glomerulus, the urine proceeds to the kidney tubules. The cells lining the tubules reabsorb some materials in the urine which the body wants to save such as glucose, albumin, etc. and also adjust...

A periodic fever syndrome characterized by a long history of episodic fever attacks. Attacks occur every 4-8 weeks and last 3-7 days. Clinical signs include lymphadenopathy, abdominal pain and diarrhea, headache, hepato/splenomegaly, arthralgia/arthritis, and skin lesions. Laboratory findings reveal acute phase response with high C-reactive protein levels, leukocytosis, increased TNFa, IL-6 and IFN?. Also increased levels of anti-inflammatory substances IL-1ra, sTNFR p55 and sTNRF p75. Most typical is an elevation of IgD with many showing an elevation of IgA as well. Treatment involves use of anti-inflammatory drugs including colchicine. It is an autosomal recessive hereditary disease with mevalonate kinase the...

This seems to be an uncommon syndrome that I’m seeing in young Shar-Pei. These pups have excessive wrinkling and overdone heads. At some point moderate to severe itching develops with excoriations due to self-trauma the result. In addition the skin becomes excessively scaly with serum exudation drying on the surface as crusts. I suspect these individuals have excessively high levels of hyaluronan (mucin) which can lead to inflammation of the skin. In one article it was demonstrated that Shar-Pei have five fold higher levels of hyaluronan than other dog breeds. It is also known that hyaluronan (HA) can broken down...

Hyaluronan (HA) also known as hyaluronic acid, hyaluronate and mucin is a polysaccharide composed of repeating disaccharides of glucuronic acid and N-acetylglucosamine. Hence hyaluronan belongs to the family of glycosaminoglycans. An HA molecule can be made up of hundreds to thousands of these repeat sugar units. HA tends to maintain the status of a viscoelastic solution or paste depending on the concentration and size of the molecules. These long molecules tend to aggregate into mesh works. In solution HA molecules assume a complex ribbon coil structure. A good analogy would be Jell-O®. When Jell-O® is diluted with too much water...