Panelists share their experiences with using CPMA for Parvo treatment
Sponsored by Elanco Animal Health
Adam Christman, DVM, MBA
I want to follow up with you from a shelter perspective. So are there any unique strategies for the shelter space to make the most cost effective utilization of CPMA?
Fathom Woods
Yeah, currently, we're doing dogs under five pounds. So with a 1 mL vial, you can get two monoclonal antibodies to the dogs. And so we're not wasting product, because we don't really know how long we can use it after it's thawed. Right now we're doing no longer than 12 hours after. It's been hard to use, if we can't use it immediately. And now we are starting to do seven pounds and under because we do get tiny dogs in, but we get kind of that mid range like six to 15 pounds is what we typically see. And I think it's going to outweigh the other cost of the medication. So if we're giving this antibody and their symptoms are less, we're using less medications, we're using less resources from our shelter. And I think we're going to see that it's actually long run.
Adam Christman, DVM, MBA
Excellent. And who here has used CPMA on their patients? Okay, and what what has your experience been like Dr Lappin?
Michael Lappin, DVM, PhD, DACVIM
Well, I checked in with our urgent care critical care person that's working with this product, who is also at Elanco, a consultant, Dr Zersen, and we've given 10 doses today. So 10 separate puppies, four of which were in classic protocols, where everything was done, and six that were outpatient protocol, derivations of outpatient, with no evidence of any side effects. And too early to say clinical effect, but all 10 of those animals are still alive.
Adam Christman, DVM, MBA
It's wonderful. Excellent. What about your perspective?
Fathom Woods
Fortunately, we've only been able to use it on for puppies. We got them from another shelter, and they'd already been symptomatic for three days. So they're pretty sick when they got to us, so we didn't get to give it early on, which is, you know, the recommendation. Unfortunately, we lost majority of that litter. They were all under five pounds. They were all very anemic and just in really, really bad shape. But during the injection, there wasn't any issues at all the litter that we lost. The vets were assuming based on their symptoms that they could potentially have distemper. They were getting very etheric and skin issues and dry eyes, and just so many things that could lead to that. And we do see that in part, but we see some dogs that do get distemper. And so there were eight puppies and three survived. And not all of them got the monoclonal antibody. But based on their symptoms, it's a high probability that they most likely did have distemper. We just don't test for it in Parvo, because of cost.
Erik Zager, DVM, DACVECC
We've been able to give it to four patients. Luckily, all four have survived, but we had similar experiences where they were very, very sick, and it wasn't the jump back the next day. But luckily, all four have made it. And you know, we all really want to make those those kind of thoughts about those four cases. But we all know medicine is not like that. And so we're still just excited that we were able to to start it so soon. I think it is just like any new drug; we're now in that phase where we finally got to primetime in these next few, probably few months and years that we're going to be that primetime where we really get to see what the impact is. And so I think we're all still very much hopeful that in a year from now on, we're coming back to this panel discussion, it is "Oh my god this last year has been so different."