Pharmacological properties
According to the instructions, Vincristine is a rose vinca alkaloid and represents the pharmacological category of cytostatic agents. The main active substance binds to the tubulin protein and promotes disruption of the microtubular cellular apparatus and rupture of the mitotic spindle. The drug can suppress mitosis in metaphase. It also interferes with glutamate metabolism and the possible production of nucleic acid, and has an immunosuppressive effect.
Negative reactions
Negative reactions can occur from the nervous system of animals, the digestive tract, urinary, respiratory, endocrine, and hematopoietic systems.
Local side effects from Vincristine for dogs: hair loss, azoospermia, phlebitis, necrosis when the drug gets under the skin.
In what cases is the drug used? We'll talk about this later.
As the instructions tell us, Vincristine is used in veterinary medicine in the treatment of the following malignant neoplasms in animals.
Side effects of the drug Vincristine
Possible convulsions, loss of sensitivity with the appearance of constantly progressive paresthesia and with continued treatment of neurotic pain with possible motor disorders, constipation, paralytic intestinal obstruction, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, ulcerative necrotic lesions of the digestive tract, polyuria and dysuria, granulocytopenia, anemia and thrombocytopenia, acute attack of dyspnea, bronchospasm, weight loss, fever, headache, optic atrophy with blindness, temporary loss of vision of cortical origin, inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion syndrome with increased urinary sodium excretion in the presence of hyponatremia, reversible alopecia, amenorrhea, azoospermia .
Mammary cancer
In such a case, therapy is carried out with a combination of medications using Doxorubicin, Cyclophosphamide and Vincristine, but this is extremely dangerous for the animal and rarely leads to recovery. With such an oncological process, the best results are shown by the combination of the drugs Vincristine and Adriamycin. Thus, in 50% of sick cats, a slight remission can be achieved or the progression of a malignant tumor can be prolonged.
special instructions
Intrathecal administration of vincristine can cause death.
During treatment, regular hematological monitoring should be carried out. In case of development of leukopenia, special precautions should be taken when administering repeated doses.
If uric acid levels increase, urine alkalization and uricosynthesis inhibitors are recommended.
If liver function tests increase, the dose of vincristine should be reduced.
The concentration of sodium ions in the blood serum should be determined periodically. To correct hyponatremia, it is recommended to administer appropriate solutions.
Patients with a history of neuropathy are subject to special monitoring.
Vincristine should be prescribed with caution to elderly patients, because their neurotoxicity may be more pronounced.
Any complaints of eye pain or decreased vision require a thorough ophthalmological examination.
Avoid getting vincristine solution into your eyes. If this happens, you should immediately rinse your eyes generously and thoroughly with plenty of liquid.
Vincristine neurotoxicity may impair driving ability.
Venereal sarcoma in dogs
For this malignant tumor, the use of the drug Vincristine is most appropriate. The medication shows fairly good treatment results, and with the help of combination treatment with modulators of the antitumor activity of cytostatics, the effectiveness of this medication can be increased to 100 percent.
Thus, the drug "Vincristine" for dogs in clinical veterinary medicine is used in most cases in the treatment of venereal transmissible sarcoma.
Use of the drug for sarcoma in dogs
Canine venereal transmissible sarcoma (Sticker's tumor) is a malignant transmissible pathology of the genital organs in dogs that is sexually transmitted.
The main symptom of this disease is bloody discharge from the animal’s genital tract, which can be confused with incipient estrus. In addition, damage to the mucous membranes of the mouth and nose is also observed. A cutaneous form of the pathological process is known, when severe skin damage develops. When a dog's nasal cavity is affected, a characteristic sign of the disease is sneezing and discharge of bloody mucus from the nose. In some cases, an oncological tumor in the nasopharynx can cause difficulty breathing.
For transmissible sarcoma, conservative and surgical treatment is used, which consists of removing the tumor within healthy tissue. If even a minimal number of malignant tumor cells are left on the mucous membrane, a relapse may develop (re-growth of the tumor). So the surgical method of therapy does not guarantee the dog’s recovery. The best option is considered to be a combination of conservative and surgical treatment methods.
When carrying out conservative treatment, a combination of antitumor drugs (chemotherapy) is most often used using Vincristine according to the instructions. A significant disadvantage of this treatment is the increased toxicity of pharmacological drugs.
The use of the drug simultaneously with modulators of antitumor activity (Sarcolitin) significantly increases the effectiveness of chemotherapy and significantly reduces the number of courses. In addition, the positive effect of the drug is that it significantly reduces the risk of any side effects associated with chemotherapy.
In accordance with the instructions for use of Vincristine, until complete recovery, as a rule, 3 to 8 therapeutic courses are required, depending on the characteristics of the disease and the condition of the animal. Throughout the course of treatment, it is recommended to monitor the dog’s condition. Before each course, a blood test is performed, and a specialist assesses the condition of her body. If it does not allow for the next course of treatment, it is postponed until the veterinarian decides to continue chemotherapy. Treatment procedures are stopped when the malignant tumor completely disappears. To ensure its disappearance, it is necessary to take a control biopsy or conduct an additional course of chemotherapy.
What else can you learn from the instructions for use of Vincristine for dogs?
Special instructions for the use of Vincristine
Do not inject into the spinal canal (risk of death). Before starting the injection of vincristine, you must ensure that the needle is inserted strictly intravenously. Penetration of vincristine into surrounding tissues during administration can cause a pronounced inflammatory reaction, including necrosis. In this case, it is necessary to immediately stop the injection and inject the remaining dose into another vein; hyaluronidase can be injected into the site of extravasation of vincristine and a warm compress can be applied, which will improve the absorption of vincristine, reduce discomfort and reduce the risk of an inflammatory reaction from the subcutaneous tissue and connective tissue. Vincristine can cause kidney damage due to the formation of uric acid during massive tumor decay. To prevent such cases, it is recommended to alkalize urine, control the content of uric acid and, if necessary, prescribe inhibitors of its synthesis. Particular attention must be paid to the dosage of vincristine, and also to carefully identify its neurological side effects when prescribed to patients with pre-existing neuropathies or when vincristine is combined with other drugs that have a neurotoxic effect. When combining chemotherapy and radiation therapy with radiation fields that include the liver, the use of vincristine should be delayed until the course of radiation therapy is stopped. Contact of the drug with the eyes should be carefully avoided as it may cause severe irritation and ulceration of the cornea.
Features of chemotherapy in animals
Chemotherapy is a method of treating malignant tumors that involves the use of special medications (cytostatics) that have the ability to slow down the growth of tumor cells and prevent the subsequent spread of the malignant process throughout the body. In animals (dogs and cats), such treatment is carried out using the drug Vincristine. The instructions for the drug must be strictly followed.
Chemotherapy is carried out in most cases in the initial stages of the oncological process or in a number of pathologies, such as lymphosarcoma, as the main therapeutic technique. Most often, this disease is subjected to chemotherapy, as well as various soft tissue sarcomas in animals, advanced stage mammary cancer, and others.
Indications for use
- acute leukemia;
- Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas;
- Wilms tumor;
- rhabdomyosarcoma;
- neuroblastoma;
- myeloma;
- Kaposi's sarcoma;
- sarcomas of bones and soft tissues;
- small cell lung cancer;
- choriocarcinoma of the uterus;
- brain tumors.
Vincristine is also used for idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (with resistance to corticosteroid drugs and failure of splenectomy).
Instructions for use of Vincristine for animals
Chemotherapy treatment is considered a method that should not be taken as a panacea. Since not all tumor malignant processes are sensitive to such therapy, the spectrum of such diseases is extremely limited. And in animals it is limited more significantly than in humans.
Patients undergoing chemotherapy undergo high-dose treatment courses, which are fraught with serious complications requiring hospital stay and associated with immunosuppression, when patients are unable to contact the environment and they need a special room with isolation. This is not always possible for animals. The range of diseases in cats and dogs and the chemotherapy drugs used in their treatment is several times smaller than in humans. In addition, there are significant physiological differences between them and humans. Consequently, treatment regimens with the medical drug Vincristine have their own characteristics. As a rule, a veterinarian prescribes a therapy that will correspond to the type of specific cancer pathology in a particular animal.
The dosage of Vincristine for dogs in mono mode is 0.5-0.7 mg/m2, for 20 kg (0.74 m2) it is 0.3-0.5 mg.
Directions for use and doses
Intrathecal administration of vincristine is prohibited.
Vincristine is administered strictly intravenously at intervals of 1 week. The injection duration should be approximately 1 minute.
Before administration, the contents of the bottle are diluted in the supplied solvent with the addition of the required amount of 0.9% sodium chloride solution to obtain a concentration of 0.1 mg/ml.
When administering, care must be taken to avoid extravasation.
The dose is selected individually.
Contraindications for use
It is necessary to understand that chemotherapy for animals using the drug “Vincristine” is prescribed depending on the stage of the pathological process, taking into account the clinical condition of the sick animal. The functionality of the excretory organs (kidneys, liver) and hematological parameters is also assessed. Thus, each case is considered by a veterinarian on an individual basis, based on the history and condition of the dog or cat.
Is chemotherapy possible at home?
This method of treatment with Vincristine in animals involves observation in a clinical setting by a veterinarian. Such an animal requires monitoring of the condition throughout its life or the entire pathological process. For different regimens and malignant tumors, the probability of developing concomitant complications varies from 20 to 70%, but in addition, there is a need to change therapeutic regimens depending on the result obtained. To provide timely and competent assistance to an animal, in some cases, a whole team of specialists and the latest equipment are required, although in the early stages of the disease, chemotherapy with a medicinal drug can also be carried out at home under the supervision of the animal’s owners.
The result of chemotherapy with the drug
When treating cancer in a dog or cat, the main emphasis is not always on increasing life expectancy. In most cases, we are talking about normalizing its quality. That is, such a therapeutic technique in animals is aimed not only at prolonging life in numerical terms, but more at ensuring the most comfortable and satisfactory quality of well-being and life for him.
Situations are often observed when an animal with cancer has concomitant diseases in the form of chronic heart, kidney or liver failure. Accordingly, in some cases, chemotherapy may be an unreasonably risky therapeutic intervention or may be associated with a variety of disorders that subsequently require serious treatment. Chemotherapy with the drug Vincristine is a non-utilitarian method of treating all cancer problems in dogs and cats.
Whether this technique leads to recovery is a rhetorical question. It does not guarantee a 100% favorable result in every animal. There are cases when the result exceeds all the expectations of veterinarians and owners, and sometimes vice versa. The effectiveness of the drug can vary from very good to unsatisfactory. That is, everything is relative, since in a number of malignant diseases stabilization of the pathological process is already considered an excellent result.
Complications
According to the instructions for Vincristine for dogs and cats, treatment in some cases is associated with a certain percentage of complications. However, with a timely reaction from a doctor or animal owner, they very rarely lead to death. The doctor can change, alternate, and even stop chemotherapy courses. This cannot be discussed in a standard way, since the veterinarian needs to take into account too many nuances in each specific case.
Vincristine overdose, symptoms and treatment
The above side effects are observed, but much more pronounced. Treatment of overdose: prevention of complications in the event of disturbances in the secretion of antidiuretic hormone - limiting fluid intake, prescribing diuretics that affect the function of the loop of Henle and distal tubules; prevention of seizures - administration of phenobarbital or other anticonvulsants in sufficient doses; prevention of intestinal obstruction - use of enemas and laxatives; constant monitoring of the state of the cardiovascular system; daily determination of peripheral blood parameters for timely blood transfusions.
List of pharmacies where you can buy Vincristine:
- Moscow
- Saint Petersburg
Reviews of Vincristine for dogs and cats
There are very limited reviews on the use of this pharmacological agent in animals suffering from cancer. This is due to the fact that such pathologies in cats and dogs are quite rare, and many owners of such animals prefer to either euthanize their pet in order to avoid its suffering, or are inattentive to this problem. However, reviews describe this drug as highly effective, and in most cases it helped in the fight against malignant tumors in dogs and cats, especially in the early stages of their development.
We reviewed the instructions for use of Vincristine for cats and dogs.
