Camilla, AIHA-dog from Italy – Page 9 – Second Chance AIHA Dogs

Sheena

Guest

Hi Eleonora

I understand about vaccinations required by law, but I have heard most countries give you an option to get a certificate of some sorts explaing why you dog should be exempt. I’m sorry I don’t know much about this as it doesn’t apply here in France or in th UK where I used to live – you do not have to vaccinate at all by lae, but here in France you have to carry vaccination documents with you whilst travelling.

Heartworm is awful – you have to do something – most folks on here use Dr Dodds protocol & reduce the heartworm medication to a less frequent number of times per year – she recommends every 45 days instead of every 30 days:
http://drjeandoddspethealthresource.tumblr.com/post/46289883129/dodds-heartworm-preventives#.VrDrUPkrKUk

First thing to say is that AIHA or auto-immune haemolytic anaemia is an “older term” still widely used, but more often referred to nowadays as IMHA Immune Mediated Haemolytic anaemia, Vets use either term these days.

Any auto-immune disease is where the body attacks it’s own cells, tissues or organs because it no longer recognises them as belonging to the body – it thinks they are foreign invaders & will attack them just like it would if infected by a bacteria for example.

There is a lot of intellectual difference on some of these things so I am explaining this in my very simple way! Sometimes there is no known reason why this happens – Primary -with current technology it is impossible to say, but it is possible something has gone wrong within the body, for example that a cell line may become damaged or faulty, as in MS Muscular Schlerosis which is a good example. A line of cells has a defect through poor replication & proliferates, making the body attacks the myelin sheath that covers & protects the nerves, & also can attack the brain & covering too. These days, there is stem cell therapy available on a trial basis for now – they extract stem cells from the patient’s blood by giving a growth hormone to encourage the marrow to make loads of stem cells & harvesting them. Then they kill off the entire bone marrow & replace the stem cells with the non-faulty harvested ones – these new stem cells replicate properly, without the inherited fault & this is considered to be a cure or remission. This form of auto-immune disease would have been considered primary in the past as there was no “known” cause. Now we know the cause is genetic mutation, but I think it is still classed as primary! Things like asthma & Hashimoto’s disease (body attacks it’s own thyroid), Sjogren’s disease & others have no “known” cause. I am convinced that there is a cause of all these things – we may be born like this of course – will be studied in the future & a cause will be found. But they are of course considered primary because nothing has triggered or caused it to happen that we know of.

Secondary: Sometimes an auto-immune reaction is triggered by something like a vaccine, an infection or virus, or even a drug, and is called secondary, i.e. something has caused the immune system to go haywire & we know what it is. In Worzel’s case, he had ehrlichiosis & a vaccination, so that would be considered secondary. It caused his system to kill off anything & everything indiscrimantly. So that is secondary.

Can I ask you to go through the videos Patrice has put on here – they are really good & seeing things may help you understand things too:
https://www.secondchanceaihadogs.com/aiha-video-library/aiha-introductory-videos/

At the end of the day the treatment for all these things is immuno-suppressant treatment & eliminating the cause if there is one. Now you can see why eliminating the cause is such an essential thing to do. Quite often, we do not ever find out why it happened because current medicine is not looking at molecular or genetic level. One day, maybe we’ll know everything????

Does this make any sense? I hope it does & wasn’t too boring either.

Love Sheena xxxxx

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