Where can I buy SMALL doses of diazoxide in the EU? (w/ferret pics)

Factual Questions
1

Short version: Where in the EU can I buy diazoxide in 5 mg doses without bankrupting myself?

Long version: My ferret, Frettchen, is sick with insulinoma (cancerous tumors in the pancreas). According to the vet, who has literally written the book on ferret medicine, there are three treatment options: surgery for £300, which is risky and probably won’t cure her, as the cancer has probably metastatized; treatment with the drug prednisone, which will treat the symptoms but also accelerate the growth of the tumors; and treatment with the drug diazoxide, which will treat the symptoms without accelerating the growth of the tumors. I’ve opted for the third option, diazoxide. The vet wrote Frettchen a prescription for 5 mg twice per day, which is 300 mg per month.

Now, in the UK diazoxide normally comes in 50 mg tablets, a box of 20 of which would cost £20. This would make the cost to treat Frettchen £6 per month. However, it’s not feasible to use these tablets, since I can’t cut a 50 mg tablet into 10 pieces. Also, I’ve been told by various pharmacists that it would be a very bad idea to try to mash up the tablets and make a suspension myself, due to the way the tablets are compounded.

So I called around several high street and online pharmacies to see if I could get diazoxide in any smaller doses, or in suspension. Apparently it is available in 30 mL bottles of 50 mg/mL suspension for £323, which works out to £65 per month. That’s ten times more than the tablets! Also it will still be very difficult to meter the dose, since I’d need a pipette that delivers just 0.1 mL at a time.

A special-order compounding pharmacy told me that they could make a 5 mg/mL suspension, but it would cost me £100(!) per month, or almost seventeen times the cost of the tablets!

So I’ve pretty much given up on the UK market for diazoxide. Apparently it’s legal to import drugs into the UK from the EU, so does anyone know of any pharmacy in the EU which sells diazoxide in ferret-sized doses? 5 mg tablets would be ideal, but with a pill cutter I could handle 10 or even 20 mg. I don’t want to pay more than about £10 per month (i.e., 300 mg).

2

I am not a vet

I have used this method before to give tetracycline to a pet bird - but do not know for sure if it will work for your pet

1> Measure 10 teaspoons of dry flour (or anything else in powder form that your pet will eat) into a ziplock bag or a small bottle with large mouth.

2> Put the pill in a paper envelope or ziplock (a small envelope works better) and crush the pill to a powder by hitting on the envelop with something heavy.

3> Mix the powdered pill with the flour in step 1. Shake the ziplock or the closed bottle vigorously

4> Now you can take approximately 1 teaspoon of the powder mix and it will represent 1/10th of the pill.

If you want, you make small dough balls with the flour. If you used sugar for the powder, you can dissolve the powder in water.

I do not know if the efficacy of the pill is effected by using this method - Use this method at your own risk.

I look forward to your pet getting better

3

I agree with your pharmacists that it’s probably not a good idea to make a suspension out of pills – however they formulated the pills, they weren’t designed to be stable in a suspension or solution. However, I think you could dilute the 50 mg/mL suspension if you wanted, to make it easy to dose. Just add 1 mL of the diazoxide solution to 9 mL of water. Make the dilution in a separate bottle, so you don’t contaminate the original stock. Also, you’re probably diluting various stabilizing agents that are in the original suspension, so the dilution won’t last as long.

Of course, that doesn’t help the cost issue much…

4

Thanks for the suggestions. I don’t think there’s anything in powdered form that Frettchen will eat on its own, except for sweet things like sugar, and pets with insulinoma aren’t supposed to have sweet things. And I doubt she’d eat her regular ferret food if I sprinkled tablet powder on it, especially since tablets often have bitter additives to discourage children from eating them.

Diluting the suspension would work, but, as you’ve noted, this won’t help with the cost issue. :frowning: