Today was pretty cool. Several months ago, we applied to get Karma enrolled in a clinical trial for cancer prevention at Colorado State University’s Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital. The study is looking for certain breeds of dogs who are between 6 and 10 years and who are cancer free. Vizslas are one of those breeds, so we filled out the paperwork to see if we could make it in. September 6, we did our first screening visit where they took xrays and did aspirations of all Karma’s lumps and bumps. Since those came back clear we were eligible to do her ultrasound today.
After clearing through ultrasounds, Karma got her first vaccine today! She will come every two weeks for 4 injections and then we are off for 6 months. In total, she will be monitored for 5 years!
This is a really important study, and it’s important that we get as many Vizslas as we can enrolled to gain some great information on our breed. This study is double blinded, meaning neither us as Karma’s owners or the investigators know who is getting placebo and who is getting the vaccine. But, even if we don’t know which arm of the trial Karma is enrolled in, it felt AMAZING to get a call saying our 10 year old dog was completely cancer free!! CSU has state-of-the-art imaging systems and getting all that done for free was icing on the cake! Stay tuned as we follow Karma through this trial!
For more information on the cancer prevention vaccine study, please check out the article here: https://cvmbs.source.colostate.edu/canine-cancer-prevention-vaccine-study-seeks-participants/
This study is also being conducted at UC Davis and Wisconsin-Madison if you don’t live within 100 miles of CSU.
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