Nupogen is a very new drug which stimulates ceels in the bone marrow to
produce neutrophils (a type of white blood cell).  I have never used this
drug, so I can't speak from personal experience.
This drug is a synthetic chemical that stimulates human bone marrow cells (It
may or may not have the same effect in ferrets).
There are different diseases that can cause a ferret's neutrophil count to
drop (we don't see this very commonly).  If we can determine the cause and it
is a treatable disease we could potentially consider a drug like this until
the body can produce neutrophils on its own.  When we do see this in
practice, by the time we see the patient and the count is dangerously low we
have to do many tests, usually including a bone marrow aspirate to determine
te cause of the disease.  This is expensive and the patient may not survive
until the tests are back.  Since there have been no studies with this drug in
ferrets it may not work or could cause a life threatning reaction (not to
mention costs hundreds of dollars).  For this reason it has very limited
potential for use in ferrets.  Also its used with caution in people because
if the patient has cancer of the cells in the bone marrow that produce
neutrophils it may cause an increase in the production of these cancer cells.
In people this drug increases the count for about 4 days, so is somtimes used
for a long time and becomes very expensive.
The only potential use would be in ferrets undegoing chemo, where the chemo
decreased their neutrophil count.  This is not a high number of cases and
again without studies is hard to know if it is safe and effective.
It is similar with blood transfusions (it will increase the WBC short term)
but it is critical to find the cause of the drop in WBC to know if the
disease is treatable.  Transfusions are helpful to replace lost blood for a
bleeding patient or post op.
Dr Weiss
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[Posted in FML issue 1132]