Prednisone

[3ratlover]

My girl Emma had a huge tumor on her neck.  The doctor is not sure if he got it all.  He is sure it was cancer.  This was not our regular vet.  Our vet does not have tools small enough to do surgeries on rats but does care for every thing else.  When we took Emma in to get her stitches out she had a huge bump on her neck where the tumor was.  She said she was afraid it was the cancer coming back.  I did not want to believe this for some reason I knew it was not.  She put Emma on Prednesone to see if it will slow the growth of the tumor and that scares me to death.  We had a ferret on it and it litterly killed him.  It gave him an ulcer and he bleed to death.  I don't want this to happen to Emma.  This is my concern and my other concern is that her personality has changed personality drastically.  Emma now is very scared to come out of her cage.  She will even run if you try to touch her in her cage.  She will sometimes come to you if you leave your hand in her cage and not move it but then she will run away before you can grab her.  When she is on the coach for play time she leaps off the coach and runs to her cage.  This is something she has never done.  She also has started to bite.  There is no evidence of the tumor now thankfully.  I want to take her off the meds but am scared to take her off the meds.  On the other hand I am afraid that the tumor will rapidly grow again if she is not taking the meds.  Do you think it will help if I put her on a lower dose?  What do you all think?

[ratlets]

I've never had any rats change while on prednisone.

Ask your vet about weaning her off the pred.

Did the vet send the tissue off for a histology report?  If not, he doesn't know if it's cancerous.

The bump after surgery could have been a hematoma or seroma... blood or fluids.  This is more likely, since you said it went away!

[gromit]

I don't know much about rats on prednisone, but I am on it at times, and I have had dogs on it.  One of my dogs was greatly affected by it.  She was hungry, and would act up because she wanted food, she had accidents in the house, and was irritable.  My other dog was not bothered by it at all.  I feel different when I am on it, and have mood swings.  No matter what you do, remember it is a drug that needs to be weaned off of.  Just stopping it is very dangerous.  It can create problems worse than the one that was supposed to be solved.
Once I am off it, and once my dog was weaned off of it, we were both perfectly fine.  I do think it can affect individuals differently.

[ratzilla]

Ditto what gromit said.  I do think it depends on the patient human or animal taking the steroids as some have more side effects vs others.  I don't even want to be around me when on prednisone but I can take hydrocortisone without a problem.

Did this behavior start only when the pred was started?  If it was post predisone then she had two things going on there- pred and something brewing in that lump (causing discomfort?) so it might be just the meds or a combination of the two.  With your dual concerns I would be asking the surgical vet or your regular vet about weaning her off the predisone and what alternatives are available to treat her with.

Merck vet manual quote "Significant mood and behavioral changes have been described in humans receiving corticosteroid therapy and may be seen in animals as well."