[Lauren S]

Hi Jared, sorry to say I don’t have an update that will help you. I lost my boy a month ago to the IMTP. He went through 4 bouts of IMTP from 2017-2020 and during that time, his lipase levels were like a rollercoaster.

I’ve charted all of his bloodwork in Excel (there was a lot of it given the IMTP) and he had an abnormal CPL (the pancreas-specific lipase test, as the poster above mentions) for pretty much all of 2017. He did have drug-induced pancreatitis at one point that we had to hospitalize him for since it coincided with an IMTP relapse, but he wasn’t symptomatic any other time throughout his life and he still had these high levels that would rise and fall. He was on a ton of medication for the IMTP but his pancreatic levels didn’t coincide with the level of drugs he was on for that, with the exception of the one instance where it was drug induced. He had so much testing done for other things, with numerous abdominal ultrasounds and CT scans included, and nothing on his pancreas was ever noted. We were very strict about giving him only low-fat foods, too. It was quite the head scratcher but luckily never turned into too much of an issue.

[Lauren S]

Information overload coming, but I want to answer all your questions!

He has been eating Royal Canin Low-Fat GI canned food at the recommendation of my regular vet, who said it’s better to have him eating something, even if it means we’re not solving the food allergy problem right now.

When he was REALLY sick with IMTP, we would do boiled chicken and rice but have since learned that chicken is the most common food allergy for dogs. We’re not sure if it was helping or hurting him since he doesn’t show any outward symptoms of this.

We stopped the Prednisone very, very slowly. We tapered every 3-4 weeks at 25%, eventually going from 60mg to 5mg. He was at 5mg for awhile until this lipase issue popped up, so then we tapered again to 0mg.

The vets are 100% sure he has IMTP, but they — like in most IMTP cases — don’t know what the cause was. He had a very rare lump on his shoulder that was removed in January. He wouldn’t stop bleeding during/after the surgery, which is how we discovered the low platelets. NC State suspects that the lump is what triggered his immune system.

We only stopped feeding Taste of the Wild because of the high lipase number. At the time, we thought he had acute pancreatitis so our vet put him on the low-fat food and started doing the fluids to flush his pancreas. He LOVES Taste of the Wild but I don’t think we can switch back to that (at this point, anyway) because if he does have a food allergy, it’s definitely to an ingredient in Taste of the Wild since that was all he was eating.

He used to be on probiotics because he had some diarrhea that would not resolve during his heavy duty IMTP treatment. We also put him on pumpkin. We thought it was caused by all of the drugs he was on because he needed a good 15-20 pills a day, but maybe not. I’ll be calling my vet today to get him the probiotics again.

He isn’t showing ANY symptoms except for an occasional desire to eat grass. He doesn’t try to eat any in the yard, but will grab a bite or two when we’re on walks. Otherwise, he acts completely normal. I think this is why the vets are stumped. With such a high lipase number and everything else being normal, my regular vet referred us to NC State because he thought he must have a tumor on his pancreas and we would need a biopsy. Prior to doing their testing, NC State said this is either “raging pancreatitis or raging pancreatic cancer.” Their testing found that it was neither. They said they had never seen this happen and that most dogs would be crashing at this point.

I will definitely look into the foods you recommended. It’s so tough to figure out what to do next since he doesn’t have symptoms and it can take 6 weeks to see a change in his bloodwork.

One more thing to note. When we discovered his high lipase number, it was at 5,000. After fluids, it dropped to 3,200. We thought he was getting better. A week later, we were back up to 5,000 and went to NC State. The next day, his lipase was 1,000. NC State said it is HIGHLY unusual to jump that much. A week after that, he was at 4,200. It’s all over the place, which adds another layer to things.

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