Alternative to Lysine?

My 4 year old, Enzo, was recently diagnosed with FHV and has been having a bad reaction to lysine.  It helps with his symptoms but gives him diarrhea.  I started him on 500mg. and that was too much, he not only had diarrhea but was also vomiting. I went down to 250mg. and that was still too much.  Then on 125mg. he was okay for a couple of days and the low dose still seemed to help his symptoms but after 5 days he started to have diarrhea again.  I took him off for a 2 days and his symptoms are back....worse than ever.  So now I'm going to try 125mg. for a few days and then every other day from then on but I want to know if there is anything else I can try to give him instead? 

One of my cats gets diarrhea from lysine. For many, bovine lactoferrin works without the lysine:

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/267703/stubborn-herpes-infection-add-lactoferrin-in-addition-to-lysine


I don't know where you're located, but I'm in the U.S. I buy Jarrow brand lactoferrin, 250mg. The dose is 1/2 capsule 2x a day. I confirmed with the company it is bovine.

Thank you so much..I really appreciate it!  I just ordered some from Amazon and it should be here in a couple of days.  I hope it works for Enzo.  I'll let you know!

:bigthumb: Please do!

For my Billy, who can handle lysine, but that alone didn't stop his sneezing, the addition of the lactoferrin was what made the difference! As you can see from the thread I linked to, a number of people are finding the lactoferrin alone is working better than the lysine did.

Hope it works!

~an update on Enzo~

Today is day 4 of Enzo being on the bovine lactoferrin.  I haven't given him any lysine either.  His eye is not runny and it doesn't seem to be bothering him at all. The third eyelid is still red but like I said, it's only day 4 and I am very pleased with the results so far.  His sneezing was never really bad but has totally stopped now and best of all...his disposition is sweet once again.  I'm pretty certain the lysine was not just giving him diarrhea but also giving him a tummy ache because he was just so grumpy. 

Thank you so much for all your help.  I'm definitely going to let my vet know about the bovine lactoferrin!! 

Oh this is wonderful news! Yes - some vets are aware of it, others aren't. :dk: None of the local vets we work with had heard of using it, but the specialist was surprised to learn other vets didn't know about it. :lol3:

I'm so very grateful!  He looks even better today.  It just makes so much sense that he's missing something that is found in milk as opposed to something found in meat. He eats a very high protein diet.  I may not feed him raw but I also don't give him dry food and the wet I give him is very good.  Not to mention, he's pretty spoiled...he eats dinner with me every night and gets a lot of meat that way.  I'm sorry to sound gross but when I looked up his diarrhea symptoms of there being a foul smell and lots of mucus, I found something saying that a possible cause could be too many amino acids from meat protein in his intestines. 


Thank you once again.  The improvement is 10 times greater than he experienced on the lysine!!