? Question about the OTJ club...

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Megan & Oren

Megan & Oren

Member Since 2015
With Elizabeth today joining the ranks of the OTJ kitties(Woo Hoo!!), and 2 or 3 more close on her heels (Zeke, Eddie, Jack) any of the long-timers here know how many of the current total of 317 successes have stayed OTJ? Or perhaps, the converse ?, how many have had relapses? I'm very curious to know out of 317 since 2008, what the longer term statistics are.. It would be highly instructive to have more detailed info, like avg. time from DX to OTJ, relapse and perhaps a 2nd go at OTJ etc. Anyone ever tried to compile that? Any Acro or IAA kitties who've made it...

As far as I can tell, there have been about 1/2 dozen (including the soon to be's) that have made it since I joined in late Jan. of this year...
 
Trix has been OTJ for a little over a year now, although her OTJ circumstances are different than most kitties. She had a bad bout with pancreatitis, and that is actually what put her in remission. - she didn't got the traditional OTJ trial route.

I'm not sure about how many others are still OTJ, but yes, we have seen a few return for various reasons. Definitely keep an eye on the fuds with those OTJ kitties!! It's tempting to cave and play around with diet once they are OTJ, but sometimes that can pop them out of remission. Of course other things will do it, too, such as infection, a need for dental work, other health issues...
 
Squeaker became diabetic (among other things) after being given DepoMedrol. He was on insulin for about 8 weeks. Nine months later he relapsed when he had a serious bout of pancreatitis; he was back on insulin for about another 8 weeks. Currently we are just close to a year past his second period of insulin dependency. I still feed him low carb wet food as well as checking his glucose every few days.
The ER vet told me that remission typically lasts for eight months but the internist told me that is not true.
 
If this works this will be Jacks 2nd otj trial. Although the first one I did not have a party for him because I was working out o the house and it was to hard to keep track of everything. My little older Scooter was otj until he died of cancer. Just over a year. I totally agree with the diet advice. I always say Scooter was diabetic but diet controlled
 
This is a good article that Wendy just found about remission rates in diabetic cats.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jvim.12509/pdf

It jives with what we've understood - once a cat is diabetic, they are always diabetic and even if they go off of insulin, they still need to be treated as though diabetic: stay on low carb canned or raw food, avoid steroids unless really necessary, watch for infections/inflammations like bladder or teeth that can bring a cat out of remission. In this study that found that most diabetic cats still had an impaired ability to deal with glucose, even while in remission.
 
One thing I would add - many of our diabetic cats have concurrent conditions that can make it difficult to get tightly regulated, much less to go off of insulin. Things like pancreatitis & hyperthyroid are pretty common. Notice how many cats here have something like irritable bowel disease.

Of course the kitties with the high dose conditions: acromegaly, insulin auto-antibodies and Cushings are not going to go OTJ unless the conditions change. With acromegaly, the tumor's output can switch off - i've seen a few cats go OTJ then come back out of remission and ultimately be diagnosed with acro. With iaa, antibodies can run their course and the condition is considered self-limiting of about a year - but if during that year the beta cells in the pancreas are destroyed from chronic high blood sugar the chance for the cat to go OTJ can disappear. That is one reason why the dosing strategy for iaa kitties includes being aggressive to keep the cat tightly regulated. I haven't seen a Cushing's kitty go OTJ but don't know as much about that.

Whether or not a cat even becomes tightly regulated, much less goes OTJ is, I think, often strongly influenced by these other conditions.
 
shadow went otj 11/1/2012 and stayed that way until mid march 2015.
sudden ibd/or lymphoma and having to take prednisolone which raises her numbers but she's still holding on pretty well....
I just don't know yet whether or not we will be able to taper completely off the pred....


I wish there really were more thorough data about feline diabetes, and how many concurrent conditions, etc....
 
Sheba first went into remission in July 2011 after 3 months on insulin and I kept her on a strict diabetic diet always. She fell out of remission in Nov 2013 after chronic diarrhoea and 10 days on a low residue dry diet(I was stupid to agree to it but I was getting desperate).
I was testing her bsls and they were fine. She was a bit off one day, had a bit of a temp and her bsl went up. It had done that a couple of times when she had been sick but had always gone back to normal after a day. This time it didn't.
I later found she was allergic to Hills MD which is what she had been eating. I changed her to home cooked and she is fine but the damage was done and here we are still trying to get her back into remission again.
 
I found one paragraph in the article Julie mentioned above really interesting. It was about kitties who had diabetes other than type 2.

The majority of diabetic cats are assumed to have type 2 diabetes based on the clinical characteristics of their disease. Cats with different types of diabetes may have different patterns of glucose tolerance in remission, and these cats may require different management strategies to prevent diabetic relapse. For example, in this study, only 23% of cats in remission had normal glucose tolerance, and 1 of these had a history of diabetes developing at the time of acute pancreatitis combined with corticosteroid administration, suggesting that the underlying beta cell dysfunction causing diabetes was associated with pancreatitis exacerbated by corticosteroid administration. This would be classified as “other specific type” of diabetes rather than type 2 diabetes. Acromegaly was diagnosed in 1 cat after relapse, and it is unclear if diabetes in this cat should initially have been classified as “other specific type” of diabetes. A small minority of diabetic cats with acromegaly are not clinically insulin resistant and occasionally achieve remission (S. Neissen, personal communication). Additional research is needed to determine the importance of these underlying causes of diabetes in cats in terms of prognosis and management of cats in remission
 
Velcro has been OTJ for 5 years and it took 18 months to get into remission.

My vet told me in February that she is the longest living diabetic kitty he has. I think a huge part of that is this forum. These people know FD like no one else.
 
You're right that some kind of statistics would be valuable. I'm not sure it would be possible to get reliable numbers, though, since many people whose cats stay off insulin don't report back - I assume those most likely to show up again are the ones who relapse, and not all of those do either. Maybe the more active members here can make an educated guess, but without a real effort to follow up with everyone periodically while the cat is alive any statistics would be suspect.
 
Sandy and Black Kitty said:
Then there is my guy, the last cat anyone (myself included) ever imagined would go OTJ.:cool:
It's been 5 years 7 months.

Each time I test him, I hold my breath.
The 5 seconds the meter counts down before displaying the result are nerve jangling.
Click to expand...

Ah, so that feeling never goes away? :nailbiting: Henry's been OTJ since January 1 (after less than a month on insulin) and I still check him every 7-10 days. So far, so good! Five years is incredible and so encouraging--way to go, Black Kitty and Velcro!
 
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