New and really needing AIHA Advice – Page 2

Keymaster

Julie,
I am really sorry to read this.

I am still not sure what the diagnosis is without looking at some of the lab results and discharge papers, are you able to upload those to us?

Here is a brief “AIHA Terms” description of what IgG does to help our immune system.
https://www.secondchanceaihadogs.com/AIHA_Terms/humoral-immunity/

I’ve researched the use of human IVIG in canine treatments of IMHA. There aren’t many studies but here is one. It is about the use in treating canine IMT immune mediated thrombocytopenia, a condition where the immune system attacks the platelets which can lead to serious internal bleeding. It is good to scan this study because it discusses the action of the treatment and how dogs in the study responded.

See it on this page:
https://www.secondchanceaihadogs.com/medication-resources/
Look under the bottle of prednisone and click on the picture of the research study, it will open the pdf and you can further open that to a full page and even print or save it if you wish.

The real take away from this study is twofold, this is human IVIG and there is a risk that a dog may have a negative reaction to the human proteins. Second there are few studies done on dogs to determine if this would be a successful treatment for IMHA, and the paper recommends that more studies must be performed before it is recommended for IMHA.

Most of the success or failures of this treatment, or any IMHA AIHA treatment, comes from anecdotal use in veterinary clinics. And indeed this is the case for many veterinary treatments, the clinicians develop protocols that have worked for them, thus they become unique to that clinic. Often they have to rely on human medications for treatments. This is quite accepted in the industry and can improve the success of canine treatments. So I can’t say to you this will definitely work or this won’t work, only that your vet has experience with this and feels it will be helpful. And actually, so do I. If this were me, I would accept the risks and agree.

Why do I say this? Because veterinary science actually developed a canine IVIG product a while ago. Using canine IVIG would reduce the risks of a reaction to the proteins. But it was so expensive that it wasn’t viable in the market and the project was dropped. You are going to find that this is still a very expensive treatment using human IVIG. And that makes this a very difficult decision. How much experience do you have with this vet and do you trust them implicitly?

There are a few people who have posted to the forum whose dogs received this treatment and some had success with it. You can find those posts by using the Search Forum on the upper right of this page. Type in IVIG to get the correct results.

Please let us know what you decide to do, we are thinking about you.
my best
patrice

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