Pit Diagnosed with AIHA – Page 23 – Second Chance AIHA Dogs

Keymaster

Alyssa,
Time of day doesn’t really matter in this case. What is important is a “steady” state of hormone in the body. That means exactly every 12 hours. The half life of Soloxine is about 12 hours, so that is why it’s important to dose regularly.

This simply mimics how our body works, attempting to keep homeostasis.

I should note here, and have been remiss in not mentioning this before, it is well known that many dogs respond much differently (and negatively) to generic thyroxine than they do to Soloxine, the brand. I personally always use Soloxine because of this.

I have a friend who breeds Great Danes. One of her females was on thyroid supplementation and the vet prescribed thyroxine. This dog responded to this with seizures. Once she was switched to Soloxine this resolved. Not all dogs respond the same way, but it is important for me to mention that there can be extreme reactions.

Why the difference? It’s pretty simple. Brand drugs develop proprietary manufacturing processes using specific quality fillers. The amount of drug in each tablet is quality controlled. They ensure that there will be homogeneity from one tablet to the next. Generic drugs are not always manufactured with the same care (and are often manufactured in other countries). Why does the government let this happen? They often evaluate drug quality by evaluating the amount of drug in a batch, not necessarily from one pill to the next. If the batch has the right amount then they consider that acceptable.

Certain medications that are critical and can cause life threatening side effects if the dose is different from one pill to the next are put on a list called Critical Dose Drugs. The government wants to apply more rigid controls to the manufacture of these drugs. One such drug, digoxin, can be extremely dangerous if over or under dosed from one pill to the next, even leading to death. I experienced this when treating Chance for a heart condition. His digoxin (a human drug) was recalled for exactly this reason and in fact, he was having collapses because of this. I put him on Lanoxine, the brand drug to avoid this happening again.

Soloxine might not have the same life threatening side effects, but maintaining steady levels of this drug in the blood seems to be critical to many dogs. You might get the same dose in a generic averaged out over the 100 or so pills in the bottle, but they may use fillers that don’t have equivalent bio-availability quality. So one pill that is supposed to be .3mg may be .2mg while the next one may be .4

Something to keep in mind, if you can afford the brand, use it.
my best
patrice

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