New article on treatment and survival rates in guinea pigs with urinary tract stones
- Sef
- I dissent.
That's how I interpret it. Good article that pretty much confirms everything we already knew or suspected. I wish there had been more data available from pet owners on diet so that there might be a deeper analysis on what role, if any, pellets containing calcium carbonate might play in stone formation.
- Lynx
- Celebrate!!!
Huge ditto to this! While they made an attempt to look at the effect of dietary calcium in alfalfa and clover vs. grass hay, they could not broaden it to other foods - and pellets in particular. Since there are alfalfa based pellets (and added calcium in many pellet products), this is a hole in their research.
They don't mention the possibility of genetics playing a role. We have observed related guinea pigs sometimes correlating with a higher incidence (no notes of who doesn't have stones in related groups).
No mention of post op changes in diet to lessen the real possibility of recurrence of stones. No mention of shilintong, for example. Unfortunately they point out many holes regarding survivability due to not being able to follow up long term on how the guinea pig is doing.
But great to see this kind of analysis going on!
They don't mention the possibility of genetics playing a role. We have observed related guinea pigs sometimes correlating with a higher incidence (no notes of who doesn't have stones in related groups).
No mention of post op changes in diet to lessen the real possibility of recurrence of stones. No mention of shilintong, for example. Unfortunately they point out many holes regarding survivability due to not being able to follow up long term on how the guinea pig is doing.
But great to see this kind of analysis going on!
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- And got the T-shirt
These folks weren't researching pigs, they were doing a literature search of things already printed, so had no control over what was being looked at. But I sure wish there were some some way to influence them to promote research on some of the dietary things we suspect, as well as the genetic issue.