[Harrison]

Hello Everyone

My 31.5 kg lab has been diagnosed with Giardiasis. An initial three-day treatment of Panacur did not work, so the vet has put him on 1600 mg of metronidazole per day (two 400 mg tablets twice daily), for 20 days. This seems like an awful lot of antibiotics for a dog - has anyone else had their dog on this kind of dose? I am concerned since reading that too much metronidazole can result in neurotoxicity. Any thoughts/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Katrina.

 

[paws]

Unfortunately Giardia is a pain to get rid of and you do need to complete the long course of antibiotics to completely get rid of it, much better to have the one course now and get better than have a short course it not work then another then another then another - you get the idea.

 

[Livia]

Hi, one of my dogs had giardia about 7 years ago (we bought her suffering from that, she was 10 weeks old). She had a bloody loose stools and was really skinny. After other treatments (panacur repated 4 times and other types of standard dewormers) failed, she was prescribed with metronidazole. I can't remember the dose, but she took it for a week and then the treatment was repeated after another week. There were no side effects and it was like a miracle-cure, after two days all the symptoms disappeared and never came back.

 

[Harrison]

Thanks guys.

 

[DextersLabrador]

That does sound a little high but vet's recommend a really wide range of doses for treating Giardia with metronidazole. Some use 44 mg/kg as a loading phase then drop to 22 mg/kg, or some just give a range of up to 65 mg/kg (talking about total daily doses here)... So it appears your dog was prescribed a safe amount.

I see this was posted a few months ago so hopefully it's all sorted now? If so hopefully anybody else with a similar problem will find this useful.

If you are still worried about metronidazole you can check these out:

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/pharmacology/antibacterial_agents/nitroimidazoles.html
http://www.veterinaryplace.com/dog-medicine/metronidazole-for-dogs/

Merck manuals suggests 25 mg/kg for Giardiasis. You could bring the issue up with your vet but everything should be fine! Hope this helps!