# Eosinophilic Granuloma Complex, Foods, and Hairloss



## SparkeysMom (Apr 14, 2010)

Hello there!

This is my first post here, so let me start by saying hello! I am trying to find out information from other people who may have cats or kittens who suffer from eosinophilic granuloma complex. I have an approximately 1 year old male kitten who began showing signs of ECG at about 6 months. He began with a swollen lip, which was originally treated with an antibiotic as we thought it was an infection due to getting a scratch on the face from our other cat. He then began having difficulty swallowing, and our vet saw lesions going down his throat. After bloodwork, it was determined that he indeed suffered from eosinophilic granuloma complex. The first vet immediately put Sparkey on a round of steriod treatments, with him receiving a shot of Depromal (sp?) every two weeks. He was also switched to a limited ingredient diet as we thought this could be the culprit of his allergy trigger since he often had diarrea as well (Natural Balance LID Duck & Green Pea.). This alleviated the symptoms temporarily, but they ultimately came back.

We then visited a second vet, who referred us to a veterinary dermatologist. The dermatologist was not particularly helpful, and did not tell us anthing that we didn't already know about his condition. The gave us a trial of Royal Canin LID, and essentially told us that unless we can figure out what the trigger is, his condition would probably not get any better. This was about a month ago.

This leads us to today. Sparkey had gotten a scratch on his face from harassing one of our other cats, and now everything is hitting the fan. He is beginning to get bald spots on both corners of his mouth, has a larger bald spot under his chin, and it's only spreading. We were at the vet 2 days ago who prescribed us clavamox for his scratches, but the skin condition is getting worse.

My question is this - has anyone else had any experience with ECG? What did you do to manage it? Is there some way to test for the allergen in the blood work? Anyone who has any experience with this issue and may be able to offer some insight from their experiences would be great to hear from! Thanks so much for taking the time to read this post


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## Muzby (Jan 9, 2008)

I don't know anything about this horrible thing your poor kitty has.. but I wanted to suggest two things.

First, do you use plastic food/water dishes? It is possible he is allergic to those. A dear friend has a cat who cant eat/drink out of plastic dishes because it causes all sorts of painful sores and swellings.  It may even be this exact problem, but it's been a while since she told me the name of his issue.

The second thing, if it's not the plastic... please go check out the raw section! Raw diets can alleviate most ailments for cats these days, and especially are 100% helpful for allergies! You could solve his issue and never have a re-occurrence. Sadly, many people are highly against or just scared of a raw diet and years of meds and vet visits and heart ache later... try it out of desperation and find it fixes all the problems. I wish more people would try it first.. save themselves thousands of dollars and pain on the kitties part.  

It would be a whole new way of learning, but looking at all that you have done to try and fix this poor wee face... I have a feeling you are almost ready to try just about anything! The raw section has a lot of good info and helpful people.


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## CataholicsAnonymous (Dec 4, 2006)

My dear, departed Andrew had eosinophilic granuloma complex. After months of experimentation, I found that he did, indeed have an allergy to plastics. When he had an outbreak, a one-time depo-medrol shot or 10-12 days of prednisilone would clear him up. He did fine for years, but occasional outbreaks would lead me to other solutions, such as cotton and wool blankets for his sleeping areas, instead of synthetic fabrics. After a long, symptom-free time, he had a terrible outbreak with lesions completely filling his nose and down into his throat. That was very scary, but thank goodness he made it through. (I had become complacent, and had put a plastic water bowl in another part of the house.)


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## SparkeysMom (Apr 14, 2010)

Thanks to both of you for taking the time to get back to me! Switching from plastics was one of the first steps we took. We've even switched over most of his toys from plastic - leaving the majority of his plastic exposure in areas such as his litterbox. One of the most taxing things about the whole situation is that this little guy loves to put EVERYTHING in his mouth.. if it fits, it's going in. This doesn't matter if it's a piece of lint, a rock, food, anything..if he can lick it or chew it, he will do it. 

I have him going back to our dermatologist early next week. I just hope we can find some sort of alleviation for him - his throat and swallowing issues are barely even apparant, but the losing hair is so unsightly. And of course, he's the most loving, sweetest, biggest personality cat I've ever met - which makes me even more upset and concerned! 

I'm glad to hear that there has been some success with your management of EGC - I'm hoping we can get him in a situation similar to yours!


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## reddwolf (Aug 5, 2006)

Hi sorry to post on an old thread, but I am dealing with this with one of my cats right now... 
It started in early spring. Mr Grey had what we thought was some type of sores on his back legs above the ankle, it looked like they might have been scraped somehow. My vet said t since it was healing to just keep an eye on it. It healed and the fur started to grow back, but then after it healed the same thing happened again. My vet did a slide and said it could be Eosinophilic Granuloma Complex and sent us home with antibiotics and gave Mr Grey a steroid shot. She said it could be due to food allergies and said to switch to a food with no chicken, fish, or grains. We had been using Orijen before that... I tried Natural Balance Limited ingredient duck but he didn't like it. He was losing weight. My vet did bloodwork to make sure he didn't have some type of virus or anything, the viral screens were all negative and bloodwork was normal. Later my vet took x-rays to make sure it wasn't something else going on. The x-rays were normal as well except his intestinal walls were thickened which she said might be inflammatory bowel disease (also pointing to food allergies.) 
There are not many grain/chicken/fish free cat foods out there. I ended up getting Royal Canin veterinary limited ingredient rabbit formula. He liked that so we've been using that for a month or two now. Unfortunately his symptoms have not improved. He is still very skinny. He has more lesions than before now. Besides the back legs, he developed some between his toes on two of his feet and just recently developed them in the corners of his mouth as well as the "rodent ulcer" type on his upper lip. He also licked or chewed the fur off the backs of his lower front legs in big patches. My vet had me try predinsone (oral) to see if it would help the lesions but it didn't, and had me apply frontline in case it could be parasites causing allergies. We just went in again last week since the pred didn't work, and my vet gave him a stronger steroid shot and took a culture to test for ringworm. She also gave me a lime sulfer dip product in case it is parasite related (it also is supposed to help with the inflammation.) She said she doubts it is ringworm or parasites because my other cats are not affected but just in case... My vet also gave me a spray I can use on the lesions to help sooth them, it's called Douxo Calm sprayable gel.


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