Balding in hamsters?

[Freela]

So one of our Syrian hamsters, Yuffie, who is about 20 months old, is gradually going bald. We first noticed hair thinning over the back of her neck and her head in July or so. We increased her protein and started a multivitamin but didn't see much improvement. She was treated for mites by the vet in mid-September (Revolution on the neck.) They did do a skin scraping for mites and didn't see anything, so they could never positively confirm the diagnosis. We thought she improved slightly, but over time started losing fur again. It became pretty sparse by early November, so we went back to the vet and got a second mite treatment, and she is booked again for another followup mite treatment next week. Except I don't think she has regrown any hair since last time, although I also don't think she has lost much more fur. It's largely isolated over her top of head and shoulder areas. She now has only very sparse fur over the back of her neck and the top of her head. The skin underneath looks a bit flaky and sometimes the skin on her face and eyes looks irritated. But no scabs, no scratches, no wounds, no excoriation. Behaviorally she seems okay... she eats, she maintains her weight, she does hamster stuff (she has never been really active as far as hamsters go though.) She isn't drinking excessively, which I know can be a sign of Cushing's. She just has male pattern baldness.

I've done as much research as I can, as I know that Cushing's disease and lymphoma can cause hair loss in hamsters, but she doesn't have any systemic symptoms yet and a lot of what I read had indicated that she would be showing a lot more systemic signs of those illnesses by now. This has been going on gradually over the past 6 months or so. I know some hams lose fur from aging, but she's not ANCIENT (though she is a senior hamster.) She doesn't seem uncomfortable, but she looks ROUGH! Has anyone else had this happen? We've had several hams and have never had this happen before. I suspect that there's probably not much to do but treat for the treatable and recognize that she is getting up there in age regardless, but if anyone has anything similar I would appreciate the input!

 

[Bill & Ted]

I’m so sorry you are worried about Yuffie‘s condition. I have no idea what it can be. Hoping someone comes along with some experience or knowledge which will help her x

 

[Freela]

I’m so sorry you are worried about Yuffie‘s condition. I have no idea what it can be. Hoping someone comes along with some experience or knowledge which will help her x

She has a follow-up Revolution application booked for today, but the good news is we can see she is re-growing some fuzz over the balder areas over the past few days, so maybe it just takes a lot more time than I expected to see results? Today's treatment should kill any additional mites for a month so I'm hoping at that point she will be much fuzzier.

It's just been kind of baffling because she is in good body condition, eats well, doesn't drink excessively, and seems otherwise normal. She just has persistently terrible skin issues! We've had many hams and they either had no skin issues or had skin issues where it became really quickly apparent that there was something bad underlying it (we had one who passed of cutaneous lymphoma who had fur loss but also areas of really thickened, abnormal skin that looked like terrible scabs that never fell off who unfortunately passed within a month or two of first showing the hair loss.) Yuffie has just been puzzlingly happy but balding for months now without ever actually being sick. It's been very strange!

 

[Eriathwen]

My little dwarf Saffron is currently being treated for demodex mites, shes got a bald little belly but is also otherwise absolutely fine in herself. Tomorrow will be the last treatment of her 4 weeks of panomec, the vet said it can take upwards of 6 weeks to notice hair regrowth so it may be that as she's elderly it's just taking a little longer to come through bless her! Fingers crossed she continues to regrow her hair!

 

[Freela]

My little dwarf Saffron is currently being treated for demodex mites, shes got a bald little belly but is also otherwise absolutely fine in herself. Tomorrow will be the last treatment of her 4 weeks of panomec, the vet said it can take upwards of 6 weeks to notice hair regrowth so it may be that as she's elderly it's just taking a little longer to come through bless her! Fingers crossed she continues to regrow her hair!

When I took her in today for the follow up Revolution they did say it could take over a month to see any actual regrowth so the fact that she is 4 weeks out from the last treatment and seeing some hair regrowth is good. She got treated again today and she's booked for a recheck in a month so I'm hoping she'll have noticeably more fur by then!

Hope your little guy regrows some fur too!