Adrenal disease: if the ferret is a good surgical candidate then that
usually is the single best approach.  My posts in the last two (three?)
days concentrated on medical approaches since that was the topic under
discussion.
 
Some possible causes of itching beyond the norm:  too much bathing,
allergies, the air may just be too dry with the heat or A.C. running,
there may be a mast cell tumor that hasn't shown itself yet.  See
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/Mast/mastcell.html ,
or there might be adrenal disease beginning.
 
Re: allergies: it is usually a mistake to only consider new things when
allergies happen since allergies are most likely to develop to thing that
the ferret has had a lot of exposures to.  First step: use no fabric
softeners and go to a detergent that is "Free and Clear".  Second step:
gradually train the ferret over to a different type of litter by changing
the proportions.  Wood litters can be culprits sometimes, and of course
clumping litters should not be used with ferrets.
 
Mary, do you know WHICH company is buying United Vaccines?
 
Thank you, also for posting this info:
>Avecon send in saliva tests match United results about 95% of the time.
>However, the 5% that don't match are positive on United and negative on
>Avecon.  I had one of those funky testing ferrets and even though she
>tested negative on Avecon (instant test & send in saliva) many times,
>when she passed I had her organs sent to the Univ of GA to help their
>research and she DID have ADV (found it in her spleen).  So your claim
>is not necessarily true.
>
>I use both tests, myself, since no test is perfect.
 
I have also heard of false positives from Avecon.
 
My hope is that another company or pathology lab will buy rights to the
CEP test, or that the company will donate it to a university in the U.S.
if it needs to better adjust its tax numbers.
 
Thanks, too, for:
>United has been doing ADV testing for many, many years before Avecon
>was even created.  They are two entirely different tests.
 
I knew the second and thought that I recalled the first.  It is good to
know my memory isn't fizzling.
 
Boy, I wrote this badly:
>Personally, we went with the United CEP tests ourselves because they
>did a lot of outside confirmation of their accuracy right from the
>start, and because the reports coming in from people who used the tests
>(including when they had their veterinary medical professionals use
>them) have too often included false results in either direction which
>then were blames on everything EXCEPT the tests themselves.
 
The CEP tests were the more reliable, and the uncomfortable (for me)
number of reports of errors in both directions that I have read were
Avecon.  I think that Avecon created part of its own PR problem.  When
it first did its publicity it was announced as being virtually perfect
(which is impossible for any test), even though there was a lack of
sufficient outside and independent double blind testing of accuracy.
Then, of course, the impossible didn't happen, so errors were noted,
and because the company had built itself up to the skies in too many
people's eyes those errors became especially noticeable.  When the
impossible is promised people really notice when it doesn't happen.
 
-- Sukie (not a vet)
Ferret Health List co-moderator
http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth
FHL Archives fan
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
replacing
http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org
International Ferret Congress advisor
http://www.ferretcongress.org
[Posted in FML issue 5115]