Steroids question

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Anna K

Member Since 2014
My cat Bruno is on Budesonide for small cell lymphoma.

Does anyone else here have a cat with both small cell lymphoma and diabetes?

For a couple of months, Bruno was on prednisone for lymphoma. The prednisone caused diabetes. He had no diabetes in December 2013, before he started prednisone. So he has only been diabetic a very short time. We tapered off the prednisone and he is now on budesonide. While this is not as bad as prednisone, I worry that he will never get to remission because he will always be on steroids.

Can a cat on budesonide go into remission for diabetes? If this has happened to your cat, please share :) I want some happy stories :) Thanks.
 
For Mitten and Baily budesonide had little effect on BG/insulin dose. It did necessitate an increase for Lightning and it is seeming to necessitate a n increase for MurrFee (only started about two weeks ago).
 
Um ... with the lymphoma, unless you are doing chemo, I really think you should just plan on continuing with insulin for as long as you have your kitty.
 
Yeah, we are doing chemo. It's called Chlorambucil and it's every other day. Plus budesonide daily and a vitamin B12 shot every other week.
 
I've been through chemo with a cat. Unfortunately, the stats, and my experience, aren't great.

So for right now, just keep on keeping on with the insulin and enjoy your time together in the now.
 
Brie was diagnosed and insulin dependent for four years before he was diagnosed with lymphoma. He was started on prednisolone and he did require more insulin being on the pred. His sugars were managed very well until the last few months of his life. Sandy
 
Sandy, did they ever try budesonide instead of pred? It is a relatively new drug so maybe not. Supposed to be much better for blood sugar.

BKM I know chemo sounds scary. Most of the time I would agree with you, don't bother. But the particular chemo for small cell lymphoma is very effective and has very few side effects.

See here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092124/

"Treatment with chlorambucil and a glucocorticoid resulted in clinical remission in 27 (96%) of 28 cats, with a median duration of 786 days for the first clinical response."

The median survival time on this protocol is over two years! Bruno is already 13. Untreated I'm sure he would die immediately, as he would be throwing up constantly and not eating or drinking.
 
Pepper had a rare osteosarcoma of the right stifle; amputation was too late to prevent metastasis. Vet at Ohio State University had seen 5 cases in 20 years. Chemo included Leukaran, prednisone, some other stuff. She had GI upset every single time with vomiting and/or diarrhea and they added meds for that. It was a very expensive 9 months, very stressful for her, and when it invaded her kidneys, they failed, causing her demise.
 
Anna we didn't try the budesonide. My vet uses it now on an IBD kitty but when Brie was diagnosed she was not using it in her practice. Brie never had biopsies done to confirm sm cell. At first they thought large cell or mast cell because he also had a mass on his liver. After a few US they thought small cell. We never did the leukeran. Brie had gastric lymphoma. He lived a year and four months past his diagnosis. We caught his pretty early during a follow up US for a kidney infection. He had a really good quality of life for most of that time. I think the pred gave him those months. I was a little freaked out when his sugars started to go up on the pred because he was so well controlled prior to the steroids. I guess I finally just got used to it and adjusted his insulin dosage. Hopefully the budesonide will do the job. If Brie was diagnosed now I probably would have asked about using the budesonide instead of pred. It seems like a good alternative but it would be nice to see some studies about its effectiveness in treating certain cancers.
Sandy
 
Sandy, budensonide is not as effective as prednisone, but prednisone caused the diabetes (he did not diabetes as of three months ago) so we had to taper off of it.

I am so sorry to hear about Brie. If only they could live forever.

BJM, I am so sorry to hear about Pepper. How horrific. I can only imagine. Thank you for sharing your story.
 
Hi Sandy, thank you for asking! He had a very low day yesterday and a higher day today. You can see his spreadsheet in my signature. One small problem for me is that I don't yet have the smaller needles with half unit markings and I can't see! So where I typed .75 it could be anywhere between .5 and .75. I will get the smaller needles tomorrow.

His +6 reading was higher today but I still gave him a snack. We are trying to put weight on him, he's too skinny, picky eater, so I give him food whenever he asks. I hope that was the right thing to do, even though it made his sugar go up at +9.

Remember that my numbers are using Alpha Trak :)
 
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