New member Acromegaly

Hi! I'm a new member, I joined because I have an acromegaly kitty named Tank, and I am going to be starting cabergoline. I'm a semi - retired veterinarian, I just help a cat rescue, and Tank is a rescue who lives with me. When I retired 10 years ago, I had not had much experience with acromegaly, so it's a learning experience for me. Not to mention the fact that these medications are "new". Tank has heart disease and diabetes of course, and at 15 units, he's still not controlled. My question is if heart disease is a contraindication for using cabergoline?

 

I'm pretty sure @Olive & Paula dealt with heart disease and acromegaly. Hopefully she'll drop in and see's the tag.

In the meantime, there's a lot of information you could look through in the Acro/IAA/Cushing's forum. Thle "sticky's" at the top of the forum deal with all kinds of different things.

We've had pretty good luck with clients using Cabergoline but you're right...it's still very new, especially in the US. The original testing was done at the Diabetic Remission Clinic in the UK.

 

Maybe
@Wendy&Neko ?

 

No. I asked folks at the Royal Veterinary Clinic's Feline Diabetes Remission Clinic, one of the two that have done studies on using cabergoline for acros (though limited in size), and they said it was OK. I was debating whether it would help Neko, but she had had stereotactic radiation therapy, though did have heart issues at the time. Does Tank just have HCM, or something more?

By the way, you'll be the second member we've had here who is a vet with an acrokitty on cabergoline. Oh, and the RVC was the second group to study the drug. A group is South America was the first, and they have since used it on a much larger group of cats and it's now their go-to treatment for acros. The post you were reading on the acro forum on cabergoline has a lot of history and some links. I'm adding a link to one of the posts there on a more recent paper: https://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB...tus-remission-w-cabergoline-treatment.249982/

 

Ollie had HCM and a murmur. She didn't seem to have any problems with it.