Dog - Inflammatory Bowel Disease

What is inflammatory bowel disease?

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic disease of the intestinal tract. Sometimes, the stomach is also involved. Most affected dogs have a history of recurrent or chronic vomiting and/or diarrhoea. During an attack the dog may lose weight but most affected dogs have a normal or increased appetite and apart from the vomiting and/or diarrhoea, show few signs of illness.

What causes IBD?

This is not fully understood. There may be several causes. Irrespective of the cause, ultimately the lining of the bowel is invaded by inflammatory cells which appear to trigger an allergic-type response. This interferes with the ability of the dog to digest and absorb nutrients.

With some dogs, diet may play a part and with others bacteria appear to be involved. In many instances, an underlying cause cannot be identified.

How is the condition diagnosed?

Initially blood is examined to detect if there is an exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, (EPI). This establishes if digestion is normal and if the digested food is being absorbed through the bowel correctly. If these tests are normal special diets may then be tried depending which part of the bowel appears to be most involved. These can be hypo-allergenic foods, low residue diets or high fibre foods. Often if there is no response with one diet, another may be tried. Also if the blood results indicate that bacterial overgrowth is present, certain antibiotics and other drugs may be used to gauge improvement. Ultimately it may be necessary to obtain biopsy samples from the bowel so that these can be subjected to full laboratory examination.

From the foregoing it will be realised that sometimes diagnosis can be protracted.

Is IBD treatable?

Although diet does not appear to be the most common cause of IBD, nevertheless if dietary trials during the diagnostic procedure show some improvement in the patient the hypo-allergenic, low residue or high fibre diet may be continued for eight weeks or more. If the dietary trial does not offer any improvement medication will then be used to control the problem. Again a series of drugs may have to be used to find one that suits your particular dog.

What is the prognosis?

If the dog can be stabilised, either via diet or drugs, stabilisation can often be maintained for life and the dosages of drugs may eventually be decreased. Occasionally spontaneous recovery occurs and drug therapy can be discontinued and, in some cases, diets altered. The majority of dogs can be stabilised on a permanent basis. Others require alterations in therapy every few months. Unfortunately there is a minority of canine IBD sufferers that will ultimately become totally resistant to treatment.

I have heard that IBD can be the forerunner of intestinal cancer. Is this true?

In human medicine the connection between IBD and ultimate intestinal cancer is well documented. Unfortunately it has become apparent that this also occurs in dogs.