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  Discussion on Weight loss,poor appetite and diarreah
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New Member:
Ptl699

Posted on Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - 6:14 am:

Hi I am new at this so I will do my best. We have an 18year old appaloosa mare. Her name is MAry She has lost between 50 - 100 pounds in 3 weeks. She refuses to eat her grain and we have had to put her back on hay which she doesn't eat much of either. She won't eat the denghi, totally timothy but will eat regular haybut not much like I said.Just to clarify we have had our 2 horses off hay because of COPD.Their diet consisted of 2 qts of beet pulp soaked for 12 hours,2 qts trotter,2 qts senior twice a day.my horse is fine. Our mare is not.She hardly eats. She started with diarrea two weeks ago and we have had our vet out to see her to have her teeth floated and a rectal exam done. She found an abnormality in the right side of the intestinal wall and suggested an ultrasound at NE equine center so that is what we did.The ultrasound showed everything to be a okay but a bit of inflammation was showing in the intestines par for the diarreah which has not stopped. We tried 3 days of banamine.One week of SMZ tabs twice a day and now we have her on metranidazole tabs as an anti-infammatory twice a day,sand clear because they are in a sand paddock and fast track.We feed in large troughs that are 3 feet off the ground.I am very worried about her at this point. Could it be an ulcer caused by low forage and why didn't our vet caution us not to stop feeding hay?I have bought 75mg ranitidine tabs and was wondering if I should start her on those and how many to give her. MAry weighs about 800 pounds.I hope that this isn't too confusing to read.PLease help.
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 7:46 am:

Welcome Susan,
You did fine but I would suggest you be sure you follow your punctuation with a space. Not doing so makes reading a bit harder and some may choose not to make the effort and you will not get as many responses.

Metronidazole is a antibiotic and suggests that they believe your horse may be suffering from clostridial colitis. If you will post the discharge information you received from the NE Equine Center we may be able to add further clarity. You will find dosages for ranitidine at Equine Diseases » Colic and GI Diseases » Gastric Ulcers » Gastric Ulcers in Horses
DrO
New Member:
Ptl699

Posted on Sunday, Jun 4, 2006 - 1:10 pm:

Hi Dr. O,
THank you for the advice. It has been very busy here so I have asked my daughter to sit and post the discharge info you suggested. She will also let you know updated info as to Mary's situation now.
She had a slightly thinner than normal body condition. her heart rate was elevated at 60bpm,respiratory was normal and heart and lung ausculation was normal. GI mobility sounds were slightly decreased and fluidy. Mucous membrane color was pink and there were mild petechations on her gums. The CBC and chemistry panal indicated a high normal white blood vell count, low albumin and elevated fibrinogen. these findings are consistant with inflamation. the red blood cell count and platelet counts were normal.
ultrasonography: there was no gastric distension with feed or fluid. normal liver,kidney, and spleen were imaged. small intestinal loops were midly distended with fluid but had no adequate to increased mobility. there was no excessive peritoneal fluid ventrally. fluid in large colon and cecum contents were imaged on the right. mildly edematous large intestinal wall was seen on the right. there were no obvious tmassas,tumors or abcesses imaged.
Recomadtion:
1.administer 5 grams of metronidazole orally 2x a day. if diarrhea resolves, continue for 30 days and decrease to 10 tablets 1x a day.
2.administer sand clear for possible sand colic as a treatment
3. if diarrhea persists, rectal biospy is recomended to define further problems.
4. offer any food she wants. consider an anti ulcer medication.
thats about all she said.
New Member:
Ptl699

Posted on Sunday, Jun 4, 2006 - 5:07 pm:

Hi Dr. O,
I just read my daughters post. She must have been irritated because she had a lot of typo's and she also left out some stuff. I apologize for her post if it hard to follow. The diagnosis was: Colitis secondary to possible inflammatory bowel disease or sand induced inflammation. Recommendations were as Laura typed above.
I will update you as best I can as to Mary's current condition. Mary's appetite stinks compared to what it was just a little over a month ago. Her bowel movements are still irregular. Mary had one regular bowel movement then the diarrhea returned. This weekend she had two days without diarrhea and then it showed it's nastiness once again. She does seem depressed and never runs to greet us or come for food, we go bring her to her trough where she will eat very little of whatever we give her. From regular hay, the Totally Timothy and Alfalfa Supreme we bought her. We try to give her anything she will eat from bread, to carrots and apples and It is only recently that she started to eat hay stretcher. She seems to enjoy that. She is on the regiment of medicine that Dr. Jacqueline Bartol put her on, as well as Fast Track, and Pro CMC which a gastric ulcer product. We will be calling her on Tuesday with Mary's update.
Our 2 horses are well loved and we would like to think, well cared for. They are on a regular worming regimen which alternates between Strongid and Ivermectin with the other stuff in it for tape worm, every other month. I can not for the life of me understand how this could have come on so quickly or at least what seemed to be within days of her spring shots. Maybe her immune system was already compromised when she got the shots and it just caused things to manifest quickly. We are trying so hard not to be stressed over this but we are all worried. I hope you might shed some other light on the situation. Thank you for your help. Susan
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Monday, Jun 5, 2006 - 1:22 pm:

They are saying that they do not know the cause but that infection and sand are the most likely cause consistent with their findings. I don't know if ulcers are the problem but there are suggestions that this is more likely a colitis with protein loss. I don't see why, with the approval of your veterinarian ranitidine could not be added to the above mix however. It is one of their recommendations.
DrO
New Member:
Ptl699

Posted on Sunday, Jun 25, 2006 - 6:07 pm:

Hi Dr. O,
It has been a long couple of weeks since my last post and we have been doing a lot with Mary. We took her back to the Equine center on June 8th to have a fecal biopsy done as well as stomach xrays to see if there was sand in her abdomen. The xrays showed sand present and the biopsy came back with the diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease or possibly cancer. Dr. Jackie told us that there but we were taking the leap of faith that it is indeed IBD. We started her on dexamethasone injections @ 15cc's every three days for one month and then we would take it from there in adjusting the amount depending on how Mary responds to it. We are also giving her gastro gard and metamucil to try to clear the sand issue up. Because she is barely eating grain we can't get sand clear in her which seemed to be better at the beginning of all this mess. Her appetite has improved and the incidence of diarreah have decreased but it is still present just not as often. There are times when her stools are very watery and then days when they are mush. It seems that whenever we forget to give her the metamucil the watery stuff comes right back. Do you have any suggestions as to what we could do to help clear up the diarreah or a time line possibly that we can look at so we know if we are heading in a positive direction? She is a picky eater but thank God she is eating again. If you have any suggestions please advise. Also I don't really know what IBD is, where it comes from, and there weren't any articles on it that I could find on this web site. Thanks for your help with this. Sincerely hopeful,
Sue
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Monday, Jun 26, 2006 - 7:53 am:

IBD is not a diagnosis but a pathological description of a disease process. The biopsy showed the bowel inflamed but they still remain uncertain as the cause. Besides infection, autoimmune diseases and cancer are possible causes. In humans some food allergies have been shown to cause IBD. Often the cause goes undiagnosed and treatment remains symptomatic. For our thoughts on treating undiagnosed diarrhea see, Diseases of Horses » Colic and GI Diseases » Diarrhea in Horses » Diarrhea an Overview.
DrO
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