http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=2034889&dopt=Citation
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interesting blood python article
bigcountry1
Jul 17, 2007 08:18 AM
Replies (2)
Rich_Crowley
Jul 17, 2007 08:58 PM
Good data, thanks for the update.
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Kelly_Haller
Jul 18, 2007 06:47 PM
Excellent article on antibiotic treatment in pythons, it is so difficult to find quality articles on this topic. Additionally, it falls pretty closely in line with what I have experienced with aminoglycoside class antibiotic treatment in blood pythons. Aminoglycoside antibiotics include gentamicin, amikacin, tobramycin, etc. We always used an initial loading dose of 2.5 mg/kg followed by 4 more injections of 1.25 mg/kg spaced 72 hours apart. We did this at the recommendation of Dr. Richard Ross who had worked with aminoglycoside dosages in blood pythons in the 1980’s, and found them to be more toxic to blood pythons than most other boid species.
There was one blood about 15 years ago that I dosed at 3.0 mg/kg for the initial loading, and then 4 injections at 1.5 mg/kg at 72 hour intervals. Toward the end of the regime, he became almost completely limp and could barely move on his own. I was fairly certain at that time that I had overdosed him and he wasn’t going to make it. He pulled out of it in about a week and never showed any sign of renal toxicity or any other side effects. With that in mind, I would say that after the initial loading dose, the standard regime dosage of 1.5 mg/kg they used in that study would be about as high as you would ever want to chance with blood pythons. Considering what they found for the average half-life in this study, it is clear why they recommended a 96 hour interval between injections at the 1.5 mg/kg dosage level as opposed to the standard 72 hour interval.
On a side note, most researchers now recommend the use of amikacin over gentamicin. This is mainly due to the emergence of several bacterial species that have developed a resistance to gentamicin, and also because amikacin has a little wider spectrum of antibacterial activity as well. Also, they both have about the same level of toxicity.
Thanks much for posting this article.
Kelly
