Pet Forum / Mammals / Rats / September 2003

That darn myco... I hope your guy gets better soon. It could take up to
three weeks of medication before he really gets better. If after the
medication, he's still showing signs then bring him back and hopefully a new
drug will fight the disease.
Most rats already have myco and it could flare up anytime due to secondary
infections or stress... it's the secondary infection that will in the end
truly harm the rat. (according to my vet)

If a veterinarian already knows the basics of rat treatment, they will not
recommend baytril alone for lung infections. If they keep their CD-ram
data base updated on their computer desktop, for since for the last very
few years it has included information on which PAIRS of antibiotics to use
for the array of lung infections generically diagnosed as "myco" (myco is
usually subclinical & is not the active infection, but usually underlies
the active infection). If they still use the print-version book, they
might not buy a new edition more than twice in a decade, & will always be
behind on current knowledge; & the necessity of treatment with combined
drugs has only been well established since about 1997, & still missing
from many veterinarian manuals which don't place rat care on the highest
priority to begin with. Even the CD-ram version might not yet be updated
for proper dosage, as the amount of Baytril previously recommended was
useless even in combinations, & the best updated doses are those
recommended on the RMCA rat dosage chart; see:
http://www.rmca.org/Articles/dchart.htm
last updated in 2000 for the vastly higher than average Baytril dose &
combination directive.

It is now pretty strongly established that Baytril diminishes symptoms by
lessening the impact of the weakest element of a lung infection (which is
invariably caused by multiple organisms since myco alone tends to remain
subclinical). This treatment merely sets the poor rat up for a second (& a
third & a fourth) bout of illness which will be much worse & decreasingly
responsive to medication. With the best treatment the lungs once shot are
apt to suffer a chronic condition, but the usual recommendation nowadays
is to treat the first bount aggressively & not just reduce the weakest
bacteria with Baytril merely to let the strongest bacteria flourish with
increasing vigor soonafter.

If your vet provided the generic rather than specific diagnosis of "it's
myco," then treated it with the outdated method of Baytril alone, I won't
go so far as to suggest you need a better vet, but you should hope that
this one is willing to listen & to check things you find out weather from
this newsgroup or from rmca.org where rat-focused veterinarians have
deposited so much useful information. You should ask the vet if he or she
could check on the most current recommendations that Baytril never be used
by itself to treat lung infections; don't imply that stuff read at random
on UseNet you trust more than the vet, as nine-tenths of info on UseNet is
just goofy. But if you have the vet check in these details, he or she will
find the truth of it quickly enough, & change their standard treatment
methods for rat lung infections accordingly. They can start with the
veterinarian-prepared RMCA dosage chart,

The most commonly used combination today is Doxycline - Baytril. This is
recommended for mild to moderately severe cases of lung infections, but
even this may not be aggressive enough for severe cases, which would call
for a combination of Biaxin & Baytril.  There are other possible
combinations a really good vet can check up on (Gentocin OR Amikacin in
combination with Cefadroxil; Doxycline & Zithromax...) Such drugs are
available only by prescription & with a vet's guidance, scary though it
can be to rely on a vet who didn't already know what is by now the
standardized two-drug treatment for lung infections. The "baytrill by
itself" treatment was state-of-the-art a decade ago, even though most vets
admitted it wasn't going to help much it seemed the best choice at the
time. Baytril is still used for many other small mammals effectively, but
it usually makes things worse for rats with lung conditions. Although to
be sure, since the ACTUAL active infection could be any one of a dozen
culprits, the unpredictabilitiy of treatment oucomes is because not all
these infections respond the same way to a single treatment. Without
expensive lab tests the actual infection (or combination of infections)
cannot be known, & in most cases treatment would be the same anyway, so
the generic diagnosis is usually sufficient.

Baytril alone remains useful for rat infections OTHER THAN respiratory but
comes very close to useless for respiratory infections, as it functions
only as a bacteriostatic medication (as opposed to a bacteriacide),
meaning it can only temporarily control the infective agent, setting the
rat up for increasing repeat bouts of lung infections to follow. It is
possible that no treatment will ever be sufficient, but when starting with
the most conservative possible approach to treatment, worse eruptions of
disease are vastly more probable.

One frequently has to settle for a mediocre vet who is well meaning enough
to at least check on things brought to him or her as looking in to. A vet
really qualified to treat rats without pet-owner input would know not to
use Baytril alone for a lung infection, & might also note the importance
of raising the humidity to about 70% & keeping their environmental
temperature evenly warm during illness; to use only well-ventillated
(wire) caging; to never use pine or cedar bedding, & keep cages more
radically clean than usual since after the lungs are damaged even the
slightest amonia smell from urine will bring about another bout of what is
apt to be chronic lung problems. But with proper treatment that does NOT
encourage increasingly aggressive bacteria to proliferate, the chronic
condition need never be severe nor life-threatening, & a rat can still
live a normal lifespan with a good quality of life even with delicate
lungs.

Furthermore, if the medication chosen is going to have any effect at all,
there will be obvious improvement within three days, & if there is none,
an immediate & very aggressive stage of treatment will be required.

Echinacea by the way IS good for relieving symptoms though it has no
curative properties at all. It can be used as part of a low-risk
maintenance program once the most active phase of illness is brought under
control, though as always, mention any subsidiary treatments to a vet for
the record. Echinacea isn't apt to conflict with antibiotic use, but some
herbs would (the highly effective but potentially very toxic huang-ma
ephedra for example -- clears up congestion like a son of a gun, but does
not really attack the infection at the root while interferring with
antibiotics).

When rats extremely hate the taste of Baytril or any medication, it can
sometimes be successfully "sweetened" immediately before use with a tiny
dollop of molasses, which the majority of rats go insanely eager to lap
down; or a mix of molasses & peanutbutter with the medication; or a
babyfood desert such as raspberry or strawberry; or mashed avacodo;
whatever the rat loves a lot & which will disguise the flavor of something
as nasty as Baytril or Doxycycline.

-paghat