Maybe a help to future ferrets who wind up prone to ulcerations.  Maybe
also something like this might help with ferrets who have diseases that
worsen due to extreme inflammatory response (cytokine storm) or
complications associated with inflammatory response such as ADV or DIM.
 
For those who get Science News or Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, or whose libraries do:
SN: Week of July 2, 2005; Vol. 168, No. 1 , p. 3
 
>Bruce D. Hammock, a biochemist at the University of California, Davis,
>and his colleagues now report that two experimental drugs shield lab
>mice from extreme inflammation.
 
>...troublesome enzyme, called soluble epoxide hydrolase, degrades
>natural inflammation inhibitors known as epoxyeicosatrienoic acids
>(EETs).  The experimental drugs in the new study bind to and inactivate
>the enzyme.
>
>...injected mice with molecules from the surface of Escherichia coli
>bacteria... provoke a severe inflammatory response.  injection of one
>of the two enzyme-inhibiting drugs or of an inert substance.  Mice
>getting the drugs survived, whereas within 4 days,
>
>plummeting blood pressure had killed all...that received placebo
>shots...
>
>unchecked inflammation showed extensive kidney and liver damage.
>...process similar to that caused by blood infection, or sepsis...
>
>... new drugs, which are currently called AUDA-BE and Compound 950,
>will be tested as oral medicines in people within 18 months.
>
>"We envision these as general anti-inflammatory drugs," Hammock says.
>But the new drugs may also counter sepsis, he says.
 
Schmelzer, K.R. . . . and B.D. Hammock. In press. Soluble epoxide
hydrolase is a therapeutic target for acute inflammation. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences. Available at http://www.pnas.org/
cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0503279102.
 
Further readings attached to the Science News Article
 
I will be sending further info on some people involved in or associated
with research into DIM or ADV in case this approach MIGHT have promise
for those.
 
-- Sukie (not a vet)
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[Posted in FML issue 4927]