acromegaly questions

[rhiannon and shadow (GA)]

Hello.

I'm wondering if there is such a thing as pre-acromegaly from all of you with Acro cats.

today we had another quick vet visit for a blood draw... getting a senior panel.
The two male vets here always comment on Shadow's chin and how they think she has enlarged features.
They always talk about how big she is for a female cat. just under 15 lbs.

She is currently "loosely" in remission but her numbers are moving up again and we've been exploring possible reasons why. She never needed a high dose which
I thought was the first thing that happens and when you get tested for Acro.

I know she has arthritis ( x-rays confirmed in front elbows and front shoulders)
She seems to have pains in her tail/spine/maybe rear legs too but hasn't had x-rays.
She is missing the head of her left rear femur from an injury when she was 5 months old. ( they removed the head when it was sheared off in a fall)
I don't know how much that could be causing any rear body pains as she is aging. She is 12.


so what comes first.... the enlarged features?
medical problems?
needing a large dose of insulin?

Is my vet just uninformed or should I get her tested?
Or will she not test positive until it 's in full gear....

I really like being as proactive as I can to minimize her problems....

 

[Wendy&Tiggy(GA)]

Did you post on the acromgealy board? They would know more. .. Good luck.. From what I have seen though I think the insulin issues come first and then the features...

 

[Wendy&Neko]

My Neko was always a "full bodied" girl. At the worst, she was about 15.5 lbs, but I had slowly gotten her back to about 13.5-14.0 lbs for several years before her diabetes dx. I think she has some maine coon in her, but since she was a stray from the shelter, who knows. Has Shadow's weight changed any? Neko's symptoms when she was diagnosed with diabetes was primarily her hunger and interest in non appropriate foods (hello muffins, banana bread and baguettes :lol: ). She was also on a half dry/half wet food diet for most of her life and I had been transitioning her to more wet to help combat the weight issue, so the cause for her diabetes was a mystery. That said, some acrocats are fairly small, some have been diagnosed with not large doses of insulin required. Neko's facial features aren't different that average, teeth separation not noticeable. Her paws might be slightly large, but have always been. In other words, not really any physical changes that were easy to point to. She did have some aversion to bright light which is an indicator as the tumour is near the optic chiasm. This article has a description of some signs of acromegaly with a couple of good pictures, including one acrocat that looked just like a non acrocat.

It's unlikely your vet has seen an acrocat before. We were the first that my vet knew of and was surprised when the tests came back positive. She since suspects she has another in her practice (a 25 lb cat). Since you are in the U.S. the test isn't that expensive, but it does have to be shipped to U of Michigan.

The acro forum is pretty quiet, but don't have a lot of good reading material. The article above is from there. Lots of other articles in this post.

 

[julie & punkin (ga)]

Hi Rhiannon - i got your message and came to take a peek at your situation. one of the great take-aways with acromegaly is that there are a number of different ways it can appear in cats, so you have to look individually. most acro cats are big, but definitely not all. most are male, but not all. the symptoms i saw in punkin included a voracious appetite - he couldn't get enough to eat. his feet were big, his voice began to deepen, but the thing that really made me stand up and notice was his tongue was huge - like the size of a human child's instead of the tiny tongue of a "regular" cat. the really definitive thing was his dose kept going up and his numbers were hard to keep down.

looking at her ss, i don't see anything that really says acro. it looks like her biggest dose was 1.25 or so. that's a pretty normal dose for a diabetic cat. there are cats that become diabetic and then go OTJ after a bit - both acro cats and non-acro cats. so that in itself wouldn't make me bother to test for acromegaly. in general, the thing that would make a person start the testing is that the dose just keeps going up. the acro tumor can rev up and down, but we don't normally suspect acro until you get to a significant dose - for a big cat, maybe 6 units or more per dose. with the acro tumor, you can get the sense that you're running behind, trying to raise the dose enough to keep the cat in even remotely decent numbers. it's like you're trying to be safe about increases, but you can't get them below yellow numbers.

i don't see that at all in shadow's ss. i see a handful of numbers in the recent month that exceed 120. it's great you're being vigilant and staying on top of it. i think i'd continue what you are doing, but if it keeps up, you might need to restart the insulin with a tiny dose and see how she does.

good to hear from you!! i'm sorry you've had surgery and hope you're feeling better soon. i'm happy to give you help, so just holler if you have any more questions.

ps - the links that wendy posted included all the studies that i gathered up to share with people - more than anyone ever wanted to know about acromegaly! but while i can't say definitively without testing, to reassure you, there's not anything i can see that would make me test for acro. i would, however, do a blood test to make sure there's no infection that's popped up, causing the increase in blood sugar. any mouth infection (dental issues?) could do that as well.