Hi doc, I have an awesome Manx kitty who happens to be allergic to everything under the sun. We have done skin testing twice, and he strongly reacts to several grasses, trees, and molds. He has been on sublingual immunotherapy plus cyclosporine to keep him comfortable for over a year. I am worried about long term T cell suppression causing neoplasia, but I can’t find studies beyond 6 months of use in cats. Do you have any experience with long term cyclosporine in cats?
Honestly I haven’t had to use much cyclosporine in cats at all, even though it’s available as an ‘apparently tasty’ liquid now. Because it is relatively expensive a lot of my clients just don’t afford it and stick to steroids. When they live on steroids for years and years, most of them end up with kidney disease.
The risk of neoplasia (Cancer) with long term immunosuppressant therapy is there, certainly, but we’re prioritizing treating something which is already present and causing discomfort over something that might happen one day in the future. If you can control the symptoms with custom desensitisation vaccines from a dermatologist that would be ideal, but we make the best decisions we can with what we’ve got for our pets at the time.
