Milbemax without prescription
November 28th, 2011 § 2 Comments
The Milbemax I ordered from Pets Megastore in Australia has arrived.
So, the good news is that this worked – and it’s possible to obtain Milbemax without a prescription in this way.
The bad news is that the tablets have a Use By date of May 2012 on them.
Why is nothing ever simple?
lungworm – Milbemax without prescription, Panacur and Advocate
November 21st, 2011 § 3 Comments
Back in July, I wrote about lungworm and the various preventatives which exist for it. I said that I wished there were a monthly tablet to give, much like in the US dogs get treated for heartworm monthly. (We don’t have heartworm in the UK, so people don’t treat their dogs monthly for it. However, some of the drugs available in North America for heartworm would also be effective against lungworm, were they available in the UK.)
I’m particularly concerned about lungworm because our dogs are big grass-munchers and the tiny slugs and snails which are the hosts for it, are often present on blades of grass. It is almost impossible for us to prevent the grass-munching – even if I walk around saying ‘Leave’ constantly, they have already taken a mouthful by the time I say ‘Leave’. Grass, let’s face it, is very plentiful and not easily avoided.
Yesterday, I came across this article, written by a vet. He seems a very open-minded vet:
- He’s prepared to acknowledge that a lot of the current hysteria surrounding lungworm may have been stirred up deliberately by the drug companies and by vets – both of which stand to benefit if the public are convinced they need to give Advocate monthly. Who owns the website lungworm.co.uk – at first glance giving factual and unbiassed info out about this parasite – but Bayer, who are the manufacturers of Advocate? Cunningly, there is no mention of Advocate on the website; it really does purport to be unbiassed info. Advocate is currently being marketed as the only option to prevent lungworm – when there are, in fact, other meds which work. Why are vets pushing it so hard? Why are there boxes of it on the front desk of our vet’s surgery, but not of the other meds?
- Secondly, as this vet points out, there are actually 4 kinds of lungworm, not one. Which kind of confuses things, because everyone is talking about ‘lungworm’, as if it were one parasite – when really they should be talking about ‘lungworms’. These are:
- Angiostrongylus vasorum
- Oslerus osleri
- Filaroides hirthi
- Crenosoma vulpis
- Advocate: Advocate addresses only Angiostrongylus vasorum and Crenosoma vulpis.
- Panacur: Panacur tackles Oslerus (Filaroides) osleri. (I believe this is just number 2. from the list above.)
- Milbemax: Milbemax works on Crenosoma vulpis and Angiostrongylus vasorum. (Although it only says ‘reduction of the level of infection’, rather than claiming to be a complete cure.)
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And what is Fenbendazole? Panacur!!! So, according to this, Panacur treats 3 out of 4 lungworms – although the data sheet provided with it only claims efficacy against Oslerus (Filaroides) osleri. Panacur does not treat Angiostrongylus vasorum, the ‘French heartworm’, which is the one everyone is hysterical about at the moment. Almost everywhere you look online, you come across people suggesting to each other to use Panacur against lungworm and confusion on forums is rife.
The only two products which treat Angiostrongylus vasorum are Milbemax and Advocate. I’m still determined not to use a monthly spot-on, if I can help it – so I don’t want to use Advocate. Which leaves Milbemax. And that’s prescription-only, isn’t it? Yes, if you’re looking anywhere in the UK.
No, if you buy it from Pets Megastore in Australia. I’ve just ordered Milbemax from here, and the shipping was only £3.14 and it should take 5-7 days to get here. (It seems that there are several other prescription-only items which you can order from Pets Megastore, without a prescription… and save £s. Australia must not consider these items to be PO meds. I’m glad I’ve found this online store and have bookmarked it.)
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Finally, the active ingredients in Milbemax are praziquantel and milbemycin oxime. Only the milbemycin oxime is needed for lungworm treatment. Praziquantel is for tapeworms. The instructions on the Milbemax are:
For Angiostrongylus vasorum infection, milbemycin oxime should be given four times at weekly intervals. It is recommended, where concomitant treatment against cestodes is indicated, to treat once with MILBEMAX and continue with the monovalent product containing milbemycin oxime alone, for the remaining three weekly treatments.
Which is all well and good, except as I pointed out in my July post, there is no product available in the UK which contains milbemycin oxime, alone. Which would seem a little crazy, no? After all, I think there are probably many other people who, like me, would prefer to give their dog a tablet once a month than to use a monthly spot-on: There would be a great market here, for this non-existent product.
lungworm
July 11th, 2011 § 1 Comment
I first heard about lungworm when I was at the vets, a couple of years ago.
I saw a box of Advocate on the counter and posters advertising Advocate. I read what Advocate was for, and determined that I wouldn’t need it because none of the parasites it covered were those I was worried about. I concluded that this lungworm thing was all intense marketing and stirring up consumer panic to generate demand for a product, and I thought no more about it.
However, Slate has had a very slight eye irritation for a while now. It is so slight that it can look perfectly normal on some days, and on others it irritates her. I wondered if she had doggie hayfever or an allergy to something. It then occurred to me that the slight discharge from this eye is crusty dark red.
When she was ill a few weeks ago, I googled her symptoms (vomiting, lack of appetite, blood around the outside of some poos although they were firm – they were like the rind on goat’s cheese!)… And lungworm seemed a possibility. Especially since she loves to snack on grass almost every time we walk, and has been known to eat fox poo.
Although the treatment with Fish Zole appeared to work, the eye issue is still present. So I figured we may as well treat for lungworm, just to set my mind at rest.
Advocate is only effective as a prevention for lungworm, not as treatment. It only works against immature stages of lungworm, not adults. If a dog already has a lungworm infection, Advocate won’t work. In addition, it is available by vet prescription only and, as most spot-ons, it is expensive. Besides which, I really dislike using spot-ons because they are powerful pesticides which transfer to the environment (your house) and which are poisonous to fish (if you swim your dog). It’s bad enough that we have to use Advantix or the Scalibor collar in the summer months, without using spot-ons every month, all year.
The oral options are Milbemax and Panacur. For lungworm, Milbemax requires a tablet a week, for 4 weeks. The active ingredient which works against lungworm, is milbemycin oxime, yet Milbemax also contains praziquantel – which treats tapeworm. The recommendation from Milbemax is that only the first week you use a Milbemax tablet. The subsequent 3 weeks, they say you should use a ‘monovalent product containing milbemycin oxime alone’ – which would be great, if such a product existed in the UK. (It does, in the US, and is called Interceptor.) So it sounds like it might not be great for your dog, to use praziquantel every week for 4 weeks. Plus, again, it is only available by prescription.
So that leaves Panacur. Which is cheap, readily available, but a pain in the arse to administer because it has to be given for 7 days to treat lungworm. But that’s what we’re doing.
By the way, you get through a heck of a lot of Panacur treating 2 dogs over 7 days. I buy the cattle, sheep and horse Panacur 10%. It’s exactly the same product as the ‘Small Animal Panacur 10%’, but you can buy a litre of it for about £50. That should last years. I first heard about this idea from a beagle breeder, who has written a great article about intestinal worms and treating them.
