This is a reply to an FML poster but it seemed like FHL members might
like the things that I looked up, so I am sending it to both as well
as to Joan.

Well, we are in a similar club, having had ferrets for something like
29 or 30 years now, Joan.

Back early on what existed of the internet was just some research
labs, some military labs, and some schools but people did exchange
information, a situation that expanded as the smaller groups like
Arpanet were linked with the other small groups and then the internet
itself began, and ferret people even rather early on found and
communicated with each other. I know because Steve was on the "pre"
internet first in Brookhaven National labs and then when he was in Bell
Labs I guess maybe the actual internet wound up beginning though it is
pretty hard to place a date on something which began gradually from a
series of smaller groups interconnecting. BTW, Steve and a fellow grad
student at the time, Jim Stekas, in BNL were the ones who made it
possible for two of those smaller original networks to speak with each
other.

One thing that seemed to be mentioned more often (eve with rates
adjusted for animal head counts) back then in electronic info sharing
was ruptured spleens. Another was lymphoma.

I recall ferrets with lymphoma early on but never heard of anyone
trying to treat any till our Helix. We lived here then so that was
about 25 years ago, maybe a few years less. No one had any idea what to
do so we smuggled her into NYC to the Animal Medical Center for care,
but sadly she had JL (though it did not have a name beyond lymphoma
when we took her in). Her remains were used to better understand
lymphoma in ferrets because no one had really looked at it yet or
treated it according to the experts there.

Something up to five years later (so I guess maybe no more recently
than 20 years ago) when Fritter and then later also Hjalmar wound up
with lymphoma (not JL in their cases) people were already trying Pred
for it in ferrets but even that was pretty new. Fritter had lymphoma in
her pancreas but the vets knew it was lymphoma there, too, rather than
insulinoma. I don't know for sure if anyone was treating straight
insulinoma by then but think that they were by then, at least that is
my recollection. Okay, the first journal article on it seems to have
been:

Pancreatic beta cell tumor in a ferret.
Kaufman J, Schwarz P, Mero K.
J Am Vet Med Assoc. 1984 Nov 1;185(9):998-1000
which also included surgery if I recall right.

BTW, late in her illness we added Diazoxide and it was such a new
drug then that the vet had to buy dregs from partially used hospital
bottles for patients in a university hospital trial. BTW, research
into lymphoma in ferrets was still so new that we got a letter from a
university research project asking if we could possibly give Fritter
to them. They were willing to transport her and to care for her like
she was their own family for the chance to learn more. We declined;
she needed her established family and we needed her.

It may have been as many as couple of years after Fritter got her
final illness (or perhaps they were closer together) that Hjalmar
got lymphoma based in an adrenal. By then people knew about adrenal
disease -- in fact, that was first studied about 20 years before ferret
insulinoma was studied -- and some specialty training hospitals like
the AMC and the people who had studied exotic med in such hospitals
after their doctorates were doing surgeries, including right adrenal
surgeries. Lupron depot and Suprelorin of course were not around. The
documented, careful first look at ferret adrenal glands appears to
have been:
J Anat. 1961 July; 95(Pt 3): 325 -- 336.3.
PMCID: PMC1244488
The adrenal glands of the ferret, Mustela putorius
R. L. Holmes
Department of Anatomy, University of Birmingham

and the first look at ferret adrenal disease appears to have been four
years later:

J Pathol Bacteriol. 1965 Apr;89:529-33.
 SPONTANEOUS NEOPLASMS IN FERRETS AND POLECATS.
 CHESTERMAN FC, POMERANCE A.
(not shouting; that is how the notation is)

and the first documented adrenal removal was about 20 years after that:

Lab Anim Sci. 1985 Jun;35(3):294-5.
Adrenalectomy in the ferret.
Filion DL, Hoar RM.

The first ferret vet text was a thin, orange volume edited by Dr. James
Fox of MIT's Dept. of Comparative Medicine. Let's see, that would have
been 1989 (with the much larger second edition in 1998), so the first
ferret vet text was only 21 years ago, and the first documented ferret
adrenal surgery and insulinoma surgery were only about 25 years ago,
give or take a little. It is only very, very recently that the mass of
knowledge on ferret veterinary care has been created.

So, part of not hearing about those illnesses 30 years ago was not just
the lack of research into ferret illnesses but also that most people
with ferrets did not get vet care for them, there were not even going
to be any vet texts on them for about another decade, and there was not
even basic investigation into a number of these medical problems or how
to treat them yet.

Back in those days there were not things like green night-lights and
green and blue equipment lights (all of which greatly disrupt melatonin
production), and at least as important as that, and likely more so
there were very, very, very, very few fancies. These days the standard
markings with no signs of fancy breeding seem almost as rare in places
like pet stores as fancies were back then.

Oh, and back then most of us were feeding cheap cat food kibbles
because that is all that there were to feed.

In discussions with people back then -- and I have had this verified by
knowledgeable vets who were among the first to learn ferrets well such
as Dr. Karen Rosenthal -- the endocrinological diseases seemed to be
far, far, far more rare, and this has also been confirmed by others
who had ferrets back then and used similar foods, like Wolfy. That was
before those equipment lights, better foods with higher protein levels,
and all that danged (Pardon me. LOL!) breeding for fancies. Does this
mean that the kibbles did not make a difference or that the kibbles
like Meow Mix were better then, or both? Perhaps, but maybe (or maybe
also) with so very many of **today's ferrets** possibly having fancy
genetics that MIGHT make them much more vulnerable to endocrinological
disorders so any perturbation may be a bit too much extra load added to
the genetics burden. No one knows. There is a lot of speculation but
you will notice no applicable scientific journal abstracts unless a
number of us here have somehow missed a stray one.

Anyway, I have heard a large number of vets who did treat ferrets 20
and more years ago speculate that before people began breeding fancies
(for selling at a higher price and gaining notice in shows) the ferrets
were a LOT healthier in terms of endocrinological diseases with adrenal
disease and insulinoma much more rare, and they seemed to also be
longer lived usually. 7 and 8 year life spans were pretty typical even
with less that we could do to help them when they did get sick, and
many of us knew even older ones, even at times ones who were btwn 11
and 14 years of verifiable age, though 14 was incredibly rare. (BTW,
I've been informed that there is now a verifiable aged one who reached
15 years. Those very rare ones are like people who reach 110 and over
so pretty much all genetics and luck.) I have no idea why there seemed
to be so many more (per capita) mentions of lymphoma back then, but the
increased mentions of ruptured spleens back then may have been due to
an increased risk of infection.

So, the possible genetic vulnerabilities and how breeders have changed
those has to be taken into account as well as husbandry. Dr. Robert
Wagner of Pitt has already documented one genetic vulnerability*,
and Dr. Michelle Hawkins of UC Davis (for whom Bob Church has been
collecting ferret genetic material) is looking at some of the other
genetic vulnerabilities which may be possible.
* http://ferrethealth.org/archive/FHL9452

BTW, that early book was wrong about colds and about feline distemper
and ferrets. Nope; not ferrets illnesses. People can check for past
posts by Dr. Bruce Williams on those in both the FML Archives (URL in
each day's FML and also in my sig lines) and the FHL Archives (in my
sig lines), but you already know those books were wrong about a decent
bit. I have no idea what that author back them meant by "hem- strepts".
It seems to be an old British term for hemolytic streptococcus on
searching. I have no idea if ferrets can get those or the infection
route if they ever do. Strep in general:
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/YG1223
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/YG3637

A quick look shows some in poultry (notable enough to be in a vet
dictionary even), some can cause tissue (often skin) necrosis, one
form is common in female genitalia and causes no problems unless it
gets into the bladder, etc, BUT any form of strep in ferrets appears
to be rare.

The other term you asked about is "Pseudocyesis" which is false
pregnancy and certainly people mention that often enough as something
which does happen with ferrets. (Actually, since people were used to
false pregnancy I wonder in relation to adrenal if some just assumed
that false heat could occur and had occurred, and with insulinoma I
wonder if they worried that distemper might be possible -- maybe the
source of the mistake that they got feline distemper if no dogs were
around -- and just put them down. To this day a number of novices think
that insulinoma is something neurological, sometimes even asking about
feline distemper, or canine distemper, or epilepsy.)

Sukie (not a vet)

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html
"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)
On change for its own sake: "You can go really fast if you just jump
off the cliff." (2010, Steve Crandall)

[Posted in FML 6906]