Hi all.
In April I rescued our second GSD, Oscar, from the GSD Rescue of Northern California (an absolutely fantastic group). Oscar is a beautiful happy guy, amazingly sweet considering his previous life (rescued at 10 months old with his three littermates from a backyard breeder who was starving and neglecting them). Other than giardia (which we finally got rid of after 4 courses of treatment) he had a clean bill of health and is at his optimal weight as he continues growing.

Suddenly last week he became ill -- lethargy, high fever, joint pain -- and after a long litany of tests - including imaging, ultrasound, spinal tap, poor buddy - we wound up at our specialist (who took excellent care of our older dog who passed away last January) who is now leaning towards polyarthritis for although on a trio of broad spectrum IV antibiotics in the hospital his fever only finally broke when high dose immune-suppressive steroids were administered. We are currently trying to figure out if it is the primary diagnosis or if it is reactive/secondary to a different infection or condition (like lyme disease), those tests are still being waited on.

Long story short, I'm wondering if others out there have had any experience with polyarthritis as I really could use someone's experience of (hopefully successful) management post-diagnosis. I've been told by vets it is manageable to varying degrees (which is wonderful to hear) but also know how comforting it is to hear from others who are going through this.

thanks so much. It's been a long haul for this sweet boy.

Whether it IS what's suspected, and what the exact type is, will be important.

http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/dvm/Medicine/Polyarthritis-look-for-chronic-lameness-without-si/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/152657

http://www.californiaanimal.org/sub.php?page=immune_mediated_polyarthritis

I hope that you will post back when you have test results, and I'm so sorry that this is happening (but glad that the dog has you).

Thanks Connie! -- I actually found those articles last night (and others from PubMed and various Veterinary manuals -- my curse, in a way, is that I'm a doctoral student, so my nature my first response is to start doing tons of research (the bad part is, as a grad student, this whole thing is a major financial burden...but I'll deal with that, his getting better is most important)). Unfortunately, there's little studies available concerning treatment success, which is why I'm especially interested if there are others out there who have experienced this.

One difficulty is that he has not presented swollen joints but it's very clear he has stiffness and joint pain especially in the spine all the way through the neck.

Thanks so much for this (and your other) resource(s). I will post back as diagnosis and prognosis continues to be sorted out.
I thought it would be a long time before we wound up in the specialists' office again (our current dogs are 14 months and 2 years). Sadly, this is not the case. It's so hard.

No swollen joints is odd indeed. And do you feel heat in them?

When you have test results, I will gladly dig up saved material and give you what I have. I will probably not be able to give you stuff you don't already have, but I'll try.

Like treatment with other immune-mediated disorders, it's a balancing act, and the "success" has to be measured in more than one way. But you know all this, better than I do.

I'd love to get whatever you have -- I'm a doctoral student but not one in a relevant field (philosophy, ha!). So that only means I can dig stuff up, it's doesn't necessarily mean I understand it very well!

Indeed, apparently the joints (front wrists and spine) did feel hot to the hospital staff/doctors (I couldn't tell if that was just the fact that he had a fever). It's been three days in the hospital and with each day (before the steroids were given) the fever continued to rise or stay at 104-104.5 and he become more and more stiff and in pain (originally he did not find touch painful but as it's gone on when his joints are squeezed it's excruciating for him, even with the narcotic patch).

His CBC is fine except for elevated white blood cell count (of course), the spinal fluid ruled out meningitis. We'll see.
I'll keep you posted.

Well, if I could figure out how to change the topic title I would...it turns out, after a day of culturing the spinal fluid showed that he has sterile neutrophilic meningitis. we are still waiting on the other tests (tick borne illness one mainly) to make sure he doesn't/does have any additional diagnosis.

The good news is he is responding remarkably well to the immune-suppressive treatment (fever is still gone, mobility is back, joint soreness is dissipating). He will stay on antibiotics (doxycyline) until we know for sure the other results but general treatment is looking like prednisone for 10-14 months, with gradual weaning during the time, observation of reaction to weaning and constant observation for relapse. Hopefully he'll respond well to the weaning as long-term prednisone is not something I'd prefer (having lost a dog to liver failure). But for now it's all about choosing the battle to focus on, I guess.

As long as things continue for the better tonight and tomorrow morning, I should be able to bring him home late afternoon tomorrow.

See

http://leerburg.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=10&Number=248305&Searchpage=1&Main=23921&Words=+Rebecca+Katz&topic=0&Search=true#Post248305