Conditions Kidney Disease Causes

[Helena29]

Hi,

Do bacterial infections cause kidney disease in guinea pigs? I found some info online that I posted below. My guinea pig never had pododermatitis but he did have a staph infection. Did his staph infection cause his kidney disease?

- Helena


EXTRA INFO:
(broken link removed)

Guinea pigs
Guinea pigs commonly develop a condition termed 'chronic interstitial nephritis,' which is a long-term inflammation of the kidney. Kidney disease may also be caused by diabetes mellitus and spread of infection from pododermatitis due to the bacteria Staphylococcus.
Guinea pigs are also susceptible to a parasite, Klossiella cobayae, which lives in the kidney, but rarely seems to cause disease.

Kidney failure can occur in rabbits, and be due to many causes including:
Infections including pyelonephritis, an inflammation of the kidney, often due to a bacterial infection

 

[bpatters]

Possibly. But @Helena29, you're driving yourself nuts asking questions that can't be answered. No one knows, or can know, whether the infection your pig had caused the kidney problems or not.

You can't protect pigs from infection unless you're going to keep them in an isolation chamber and completely ban all contact with them. The organisms that can make you, or the pig, ill, are everywhere -- on every surface (including your skin), in the air, etc. Sometimes they take hold in an animal/human, most times they don't.

Kidney damage, once it's occurred, is mostly irreversible. I think you need to just enjoy your pig, and stop obsessing over what might have gone wrong. You're a good caretaker. Things just happen, even to pigs who have good caretakers.

I think I'm as good a caretaker as I can possibly be, and I know quite a lot about guinea pigs and diseases. But I came in this afternoon to find that my Ruffles, who was totally fine at midnight last night, with her nose in the corner of the cage, runny eyes, and very labored breathing. I grabbed her up and we went to the vet. Her lungs are nearly completely filled with, and surrounded by, fluid. There's so much of it that they can't see any underlying cause for it. She may have cancer, she may have heart disease, she may have a particularly virulent pneumonia.

There's absolutely nothing I could have done to have prevented that. The only thing that might have made a difference would be if I hadn't had a meeting to go to early this morning, and had been here a few hours earlier to have noticed the symptoms sooner. But with no indication that anything is wrong, I can't restrict my life to my living room on the off chance that one of my pigs/my dog/my cat/my husband is going to get sick. You just deal with what happens, because the past is past, and there's nothing you can do about it.

So please relax and enjoy your pig. Do your best, and that's all you can do, and all anyone can ask you to do. Worrying isn't going to help a thing.

 

[Helena29]

Sorry about your pig. Hope she makes a full recovery.
I'm actually just really inquisitive, a lot like Curious George. I like to solve puzzles.
And I'm a teacher, so I ask lots of questions. I like to know why things happen.
Medical stuff is fascinating to me.
Sorry, I think I'm driving you nuts!

- Helena

 

[CavyMama]

@Helena29, I think what @bpatters meant (and BP correct me if I'm wrong) was that although it's fine to be curious, trying to rack your brain to figure out why something happened, after the fact, isn't going to change anything except to drive you crazy. As she said, even if you do figure out what happened to your pig, there might be no way to prevent it from happening again to the next. Guinea pigs are prey animals and will hide symptoms until many times, it's almost too late.

In some cases, getting a necropsy can help narrow down the cause.

 

[Helena29]

@CavyMama. Haha. Actually, I looked into getting a necropsy done. It's way too expensive! Over $500 ... So, I'm not doing that and I guess for the most part, my questions will remain unanswered. Which is fine ... I still think they were worth asking.
Thank - you for your concern but I'm fine. I'm not driving myself crazy. Nor do I expect anything to change in regards to the health of my two guinea pigs.
To me, knowledge is power. I'm not asking these questions only for me, but I'm asking for anyone in the future who reads any of my posts/threads.
I really only asked 3 questions (and they were all about kidney disease because at the time that I asked those questions, I could not find
any material on that subject):
- Does anyone have any information of kidney disease?
- Could a bacterial infection cause a kidney stone?
- Could a bacterial infection cause kidney disease?
It's only 3 questions ...
Although I could add: If a guinea pig has kidney disease, is he more likely to develop a bacterial infection?
My search is over, I'm not looking for answers to the above questions. This was just a response to CavyMama's post (mentioned above). I have all the information I need. Now, I am just enjoying my guinea pigs. Thank - you for your feedback!