AHHH the ring worm is back

I'm wondering if anyone has ever had a problem with persistant recurrent ring worm. Jordan had ring worm that had cleared up & I had followed all the vets advice on how to clean & vacum & such to get rid of the spores. So my question is how long is this going to take to get out of my appartment & thru his system before I can be in the clear?

Here are a couple of sites on Ringworm. Unfortunately the environment is the toughest to clean, and there are some good tips in these, particularly the last one.

http://www.fabcats.org/is16.html
http://www.petngarden.com/cats/index.html
http://www.pandecats.com/x/ringworm_battle_plan.htm\\

Good luck!! This can sometimes be very difficult to treat!!

It can take a long, long, looooong time! I only had one bout of it a long time ago. Both Mike and I ended up with it and as I recall it was about 3 months before it finally went away! That is the last time I have seen it- thank God! The poor kitten was just covered in it too.

It can take awhile to clear the enviroment You might want to look into the new research on Sentinal (the flea tabs). From the things I have read, it can help to prevent reoccurance of ringworm.

I read the article at petngarden.com and while it was very informative I am curious what the author would think about stopping the spread of ringworm at a rescue shelter, when maybe 1 in 10 incoming cats has an active case. Needless to say we treat the infected cats but trying to sterilize the shelter environment everytime we see a new case would be impossible.

Ask your vet about Program (the oral flea killer). There have been some studies showing it very effective against certain types of ringworm. I had trouble with ringworm in my cats for a few years, until the vet tried Program - that finally cleared it up.

Another question I've got is about using supplements to up his immune system. This is Jordan's 2nd go round & Levi has not had ring worm at all. The vet made a passing comment yesterday about the fact that maybe Jordan's immune system wasn't up to snuff. I'm wondering how save are natural supplements & which one's would help his immune system?

I appreciate the help because we are on our 2nd bottle of the anti-fungal medication and at $150 a bottle I can't really afford to be playing hide & seek with ring worm.

That's interesting...
2 of my cats were very susceptible to ringworm & it kept coming back, while one cat had it a little bit, and the 4th cat never had any symptoms.

It could be that Jordan's immune system isn't as good. It's also possible that Levi could be an asymptomatic carrier - have you had a culture done of his fur? That would let you know if he has it & it just doesn't show, or if he's clean.

For the immune system booster, I've seen people on this site write about giving Grapefruit Seed Extract to cats, but I've never tried it. If you want to try it, check with your vet to make sure it's OK to take with the medicine you're giving, and to find out the best dosage - I think it only takes a drop or so mixed in water.

I would strongly recommend asking your doctor about trying Program - it worked well for my cats, and is much less expensive than the Griseofulvicin (if that's what you're using). I tried the fulvicin on my cats, but it made 2 of them very sick, so we stopped it. Program worked better, without the side effects.

http://www.vetinfo.com/cringwrm.html

Levi had a fungal culture when the original out break happend, but it came back negative. Jordan's second culture came back negative so I'm not sure what's going on.