Low protein in blood test?

Grace had bloodwork done a month ago when we started her on Rimadyl just to make sure everything was good. Well, her proteins were low. I think it was her creatinine and albumin levels. We re-ran her blood to check her proteins and the results came back today. The protein levels are still low. So I have to bring her in on Friday to run a urine sample - I believe they're checking the level of creatinine in her urine - to see if she's losing too much in her urine, which would indicate an issue with her kidneys. The other possibility he mentioned is a liver issue.

Anyone have any experience with this?

No experience, but I'll be interested to see what others have to say, and what you find out from the vet.

I hope it is something easily manageable with diet!

Rachel:
No experience with this and did some research and didn't find anything particularly helpful. Any chance she could be developing PLE?

Crystal had these elevated levels too, just before I lost her. They weren't inordinately high, but enough to indicate that her kidneys were starting to get weary, (not unusual in elderly dogs and cats) so I was starting to research how to tweak her diet. Boots has her next bloods due soon, we are half-expecting to see her levels up, although they were ok last time.

Anyway, the tweak boiled down to three basic things:

(1)Reduce the load on toxin processing in the kidneys by adding a fair whack of fermentable fibre to the diet so that the colon takes on some of the work.

(2)Instead of reducing protein to decrease phosophorus and magnesium, add phosphorous binders like ground eggshell, so that the kidneys don't need to extract it.

(3)High blood pressure will force the kidneys to work harder, so add Omega 6 and 3 to decrease blood pressure - optimum balance is five O-6 to one O-3, so fish oil is the best supplement for that.

northernwitch wrote:Rachel:
No experience with this and did some research and didn't find anything particularly helpful. Any chance she could be developing PLE?

He hasn't mentioned PLE yet, Blanche. I think he's going to start with checking the kidneys and the liver first. I did a quick search on PLE and decided I'm not quite ready yet to research it too much - it sounds scary. But I will be sure to mention it to the vet if we don't get anything from the kidney and liver testing.

Puggered wrote:Crystal had these elevated levels too, just before I lost her. They weren't inordinately high, but enough to indicate that her kidneys were starting to get weary, (not unusual in elderly dogs and cats) so I was starting to research how to tweak her diet. Boots has her next bloods due soon, we are half-expecting to see her levels up, although they were ok last time.

Anyway, the tweak boiled down to three basic things:

(1)Reduce the load on toxin processing in the kidneys by adding a fair whack of fermentable fibre to the diet so that the colon takes on some of the work.

(2)Instead of reducing protein to decrease phosophorus and magnesium, add phosphorous binders like ground eggshell, so that the kidneys don't need to extract it.

(3)High blood pressure will force the kidneys to work harder, so add Omega 6 and 3 to decrease blood pressure - optimum balance is five O-6 to one O-3, so fish oil is the best supplement for that.

Angela, her protein levels (creatinine and albumin) are low, not high.

We're checking to see if for some reason she's excreting too much creatinine in her urine; if so, then something isn't right with her kidneys. If that's not it, then we'll move on to the liver. We're keeping our fingers crossed that whatever it is, it's something treatable.

Sorry Rachel, I had that backwards.

Low? Oh, that's scary... I hope that its just a false positive or something and not a nasty in her gastro-int tract.
Hugs to you both. Please keep us updated.