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Our 11 month old Bengal boy Satai recently fell foul of this ghastly condition. It progressed over the period of a fortnight from a reluctance to jump through to total paralysis of his back legs and tail. (His tail dragged like a chain.) He became moderately constipated, and had started to affect his front legs. It was truly awful. At the illness' nadir we feared he might not make it to his first birthday.
We noticed his altered behaviour and raised the alarm very early on (we thought it might be first signs of dysplasia) and went through several specialists before tracking down a vet neurologist (didn't even know they existed!), and whilst we were unwilling to submit the poor boy to a nerve biopsy diagnosis was able to be confirmed by way of nerve conduction tests under anaesthesia. Prednisolone was prescribed (0.8mg twice daily for a fortnight, then tapering back).
The first faint signs of improvement came 2 days later with his ability to drag himself up onto a low plinth, and 6 weeks later I'm delighted to report that Satai has made a complete recovery. He lost an awful lot of muscle tone/bulk and that's taking it's time returning but he's completely back to normal, with full leaping ability and activity levels. (whether this is entirely a GOOD thing is open to debate:) )
Will it return? we honestly don't know, and neither does the Neurologist. He considers it unlikely but there is a relative dearth of studies on this condition so we can't be sure.
Hopefully if it does we can jump on it early and nip it in the bud.
None of his siblings have experienced this: we're just lucky I guess.
Still, here is a positive outcome in what is an awful, awful illness.
Here's a shot with his Burmese brother when he was badly afflicted: they're very close, and Sal was very supportive and affectionate.
And this is him now :)
So this disease CAN have a happy ending:)
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