Regular Hormonal Injections? Ovarian cysts

[WillowCL]

Hello,

One of my guinea pigs, Lucy, has small ovarian cysts (the kind that stays small, but can be aggressive). She's almost 6 and our vet is reluctant to perform a surgery (she's a guinea pig specialist that we found on this forum).

We gave her a course of Chorulon (1500iu) injections, which helped! Her fur grew back on her sides, and her aggressive behaviour disappeared.

However, after exactly one month the symptoms came back (humping and chasing and small loss of her), so she had another injection. One month later, the same happened. We gave her yet another injection... We spoke to our Vet and ideally we would like to give Lucy a regular hormonal injection once a month. This seems to work, but we never came across a case of guinea pigs (or other pets) receiving regular hormonal injections. Our vet will do some research on it and asked us to do the same.

Does anyone know of or experienced using this treatment long term on regular basis? What are the side effects, if any?

Thank you in advance, any help or information is greatly appreciated.

 

[Wiebke]

Hello,

One of my guinea pigs, Lucy, has small ovarian cysts (the kind that stays small, but can be aggressive). She's almost 6 and our vet is reluctant to perform a surgery (she's a guinea pig specialist that we found on this forum).

We gave her a course of Chorulon (1500iu) injections, which helped! Her fur grew back on her sides, and her aggressive behaviour disappeared.

However, after exactly one month the symptoms came back (humping and chasing and small loss of her), so she had another injection. One month later, the same happened. We gave her yet another injection... We spoke to our Vet and ideally we would like to give Lucy a regular hormonal injection once a month. This seems to work, but we never came across a case of guinea pigs (or other pets) receiving regular hormonal injections. Our vet will do some research on it and asked us to do the same.

Does anyone know of or experienced using this treatment long term on regular basis? What are the side effects, if any?

Thank you in advance, any help or information is greatly appreciated.

Hi!

It depends on the nature of the cyst. Not all are hormone based and respond the same.
I don't have personal experience with hormone therapy as my vet prefers to spay (and is very good with it).

@Abi_nurse

 

[Abi_nurse]

For this I would have to go searching through lots of research papers etc. We don’t do this as we advise spaying to be honest. I understand your worry with not wanting her to go through surgery. I would suspect there would be some side effects, but would not want to say for certain what. If you want to try you could place a hormone implant in (supralorin implant). This may be worth asking your vet about as the hormone injections are expensive and this would be a one off implant. Just something to ask and discuss with your vet.

x

 

[GPTV]

My 6yr old girl Ellie had Chorulon injections for ovarian cysts. I'm not sure of the strength or dosage she had, but her injections were 2x injections 7-10 days apart.
The vet said she would try 2 - 3 injections to see if it made a difference to her symptoms (continual genital bleeding, UTI'S & a little grumpy but not too bad) like yourselves, the vet didn't want to do surgery due to Ellies age & the anaesthetic risks.

I'm wondering if the gap of the month was too long & so the dose wasn't strong enough to provide an effective build up/reaction to the hormone in her body to the treatment?

It might be worth discussing with the vet if you can do two injections 7-10days apart (the 2nd&3rd)?

Ellie was lucky & the 2 initial injections worked for about 12 months, she then had a second batch of 2 injections aged 7yrs & worked again for about another 12 months, I lost her aged 8yrs to multiple health problems.

The injections are quite expensive as they seem to come in cattle sized vials that once opened the remainder has to be disposed of.
It might be worth asking your vet if a prescription (usually a £10-£15 charge) could be done then you could order it cheaper online & perhaps get it delivered directly to the vets?
I see Viovet do 5x vials Chorulon
But it would depend on how much your vet charges anyway?

My vet telephoned the manufacturer to get info & dosage amounts, perhaps your vet could try this too, also they should have a better knowledge of known side effects, although when Ellie had hers there didn't seem to be any information on these, it seemed to be either it worked or it didn't!

Its actually regularly used as a cattle hormone, so if your vet was to contact a farm vets they may have some useful information on considerations too?

Good luck & let us know how you get on.
Healing vibes to your girly xx