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COPYRIGHT 2007 Belvoir Media Group, LLC
Despite everything modern medicine has to offer, cancer remains among the most feared of canine diseases.
Just over a year ago, WDJ reviewed conventional, complementary, and alternative cancer therapies in a series of articles ("Canine Cancer Crisis," November 2005; "Conventional Cancer Care," December 2005; "Don't Despair, Just Care," January 2006, and "What Are the Alternatives?" February 2006) Since then, a cancer vaccine has been approved for veterinary use and a new version of an old herbal salve has become a "first choice" for many holistic veterinarians. Here's what's new.
Melanoma vaccine
Most vaccines are designed for prevention, but a new type is designed to treat active disease. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently approved such a vaccine for the treatment of canine melanoma.
"Everything about this vaccine is unusual," says Gerald Post, DVM, a Norwalk, Connecticut, veterinary oncologist and founder of the Animal Cancer Foundation. "In addition to being therapeutic rather than preventative, it contains human DNA. Injecting an animal with DNA from a different species can effectively stimulate an immune response that attacks cancer cells."
The vaccine is a result of collaboration between human and veterinary oncologists at the Animal Medical Center in New York City, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute, and the drug's manufacturer, Merial.
Melanomas are usually solitary black tumors, and those appearing on the mouth or nail bed are usually malignant. Dr. Post understood the prospects all too well when, four years ago, he noticed a tiny lesion on one the toes of his own Miniature Schnauzer, Smokey.
"It was metastatic melanoma," says Dr. Post. "When I saw the x-rays and biopsy report, I was devastated. It had already spread to his lungs, and the average survival time for dogs with this type of cancer is about three months."
Smokey, who was 12 1/2 years old at the time, was such a healthy, vibrant dog that Dr. Post worked frantically to save him.
"At that time the melanoma vaccine was still very new and experimental," he says, "but I didn't hesitate to try it as everyone I consulted agreed that it looked like our best hope. I was really pleased when he lived an additional two and a half years. The vaccine didn't cure him, and eventually the tumor came back, but it gave him extra time and an excellent quality of life. The result was far more than I had dared to hope for when I first made the diagnosis."
Dr. Post was particularly pleased because Smokey never experienced an adverse side effect. "In the beginning Smokey received the vaccine every two weeks for two months," he says. "After that, he got it once a month or so. Smokey responded really well, and throughout his therapy, you would never know that anything was wrong or that he was under any kind of treatment."
In this respect, Smokey was like most patients. "I'm loathe to say that no dog will ever have an adverse side effect," says Dr. Post, "but adverse reactions...
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