Epi Medicine For Dogs

Exocrine pancreatic insufficiency epi is the inability to properly digest food due to a lack of digestive enzymes made by the pancreas epi is found in humans afflicted with cystic fibrosis and shwachman diamond syndrome and is common in dogs epi is caused by a progressive loss of the pancreatic cells that make digestive enzymes.

Epi medicine for dogs.

Bacterial overgrowth is not uncommon in dogs with epi and intermittent antibiotic treatment may be necessary over the course of the animal s lifetime. Dogs and cats treated with the proper dose of the correct supplements can be given a good long term prognosis. Epi4dogs assisted with the patient registry for this study and funding. Home care of dogs with exocrine pancreatic insufficiency.

Dogs with exocrine pancreatic insufficiency are unable to digest nutrients in their diet properly resulting in maldigestion weight loss and abnormal feces usually pale and. Optimal treatment for your dog requires a combination of home and professional veterinary care. Patrick barko david williams univ of illinois. Many dogs with epi thrive on raw diets and some owners find that a raw diet is the only one that works for their dogs.

Loss of digestive enzymes leads to maldigestion and. Some epi dogs have unrelated food allergies further limiting their diet. Conversely other epi dogs cannot tolerate raw diets. The same applies to the fiber content.

Epi dogs lipid soluble vitamin research just published aug 22 2018 in the journal of veterinary internal medicine. Exocrine pancreatic insufficiency epi is a syndrome caused by insufficient synthesis and secretion of digestive enzymes by the exocrine portion of the pancreas. If your dog doesn t tolerate pork well there are also beef based or plant enzymes. Other dogs cannot tolerate even as little as 12 percent fat.

In fact even though complete recovery from epi is rare. Epi is less common than pancreatitis in both dogs and cats but it is the second most common exocrine pancreatic disorder in both species. Epi treatment pancreatic enzymes. Other treatment considerations for animals with epi include additional dietary alterations and possible treatment of the main cause of pancreatic disease when diagnosed.

Epi is treated even in conventional medicine using pancreatic enzymes to compensate for your dog s own lacking enzyme production.