# Mammary Tumor Growth in Female Rats: how fast do they grow?



## Gribouilli (Dec 25, 2015)

If you have/ have had female rats with mammary tumors, please tell me how fast the tumor went from pea size to double pea size etc...how long did it take to be the size of an egg...I'm trying to figure out how effective Tamoxifen is at stopping or even reversing mammary tumors in female rats. I started a thread on my experience with Tamoxifen (see link below) and I need the inputs of people who have/had rats with tumor(s) to better see how well Tamoxifen is working on rats. So far my two female rats have been on Tamoxifen for a week and their tumors stayed the same, might have diminished a tiny bit. http://www.ratforum.com/showthread....ats-on-Tamoxifen!-Rat-mammory-tumors-medicine


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## Gribouilli (Dec 25, 2015)

Please if you have or had female rats with mammary tumors, let me know how fast they grew. I need case examples to be able to judge the efficacy of Taximofen. Without examples, I'm not sure that a tumor that doesn't grow over 3 weeks for instance is a sign that Tamoxifen is working on rat mammory tumors. Thank you so much for letting me know


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## moonkissed (Dec 26, 2011)

I've only ever had one rat with a tumor and she was my very first rat. I can't really remember how fast it grew, a guess I'd say between 3-6 months. It was quite a while back. I remember thinking it was very small for a long time and then it just seemed huge all of a sudden almost. It may have just been perspective though.

But I am afraid no matter what time frame people give you it is unlikely to be very helpful. So many things can affect how fast they grow. Without being able to have a like lab study where you can control all the outside influences it would be difficult to compare


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## Grotesque (Mar 19, 2014)

I wish there was a better answer but to be honest, it really depends on the actual tumor. Some are more aggressive than others. I have girls who have had a pea sized tumor stay that way for 6 months and never grow and others where the tumor blew up over the course of 2 weeks. 

In general, I'd say that they will go from a pea size to a grape size in about 2 weeks if it is aggressive and isn't given any supplements to try to slow it.


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## Gribouilli (Dec 25, 2015)

Thanks you guys I appreciate learning from your experience with mammary tumors. It helps me better understand and assess if the Tamoxifen is working and what is the timeframe to see results. I know it varies greatly from one rat to another now, so I'm not going to wait 3 weeks to start another anti-tumor supplement. Sulforaphane which my rat breeder told me about. Another breeder has been using it successfully for years to shrink tumors in many female rats.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

I sent you a PM, and when I get a chance, I'll cut and paste it here, or you can if you wish, either way...

But I'd also like to address your remark... *Shrink* being the operative word. I've never seen a mammary tumor shrink despite the treatments I've used. Some grow fast, some grow slow, but they always keep growing.

Surgery is often not an option, or at least it isn't a good option or in many cases it's just too expensive, depending on where you live. But we all want to do _something_.. _anything_.. and someone is always happy to take you money if you are desperate enough to give it to them.

So you lay down your money and start treating your rats and you start debating whether the medication is working... is the tumor growing more slowly or not... and you start asking yourself... "more slowly than what?" and "how can I tell?" We were treating Amelia with some mushroom and cartilage mix we found on line... it wasn't cheap... and it appeared to slow the tumor, then we stopped and the tumor kept growing at the same rate... She had a single huge tumor in the end. Unlike our other rats, who sprouted tumors like mushrooms, surgery might have helped her, but she died at two of congestive heart failure, which may or may not have been the result of her large single tumor... or it might have been her age or something else, although I'm certain having a golf ball size tumor didn't help.

If you have an effective medication, the tumors should shrink or dissipate. For the most part "growing more slowly" is a mind game where your mind is telling you that at least you are doing _*something*_. You are taking control and being pro-active. For the most part, I think, it might make you feel better, and up to a point it shouldn't do too much harm, but it's most likely not helping your rat. 

If I told you that dancing naked around a camp fire and howling at the full moon would slow tumor growth... there's no way you could scientifically prove it wasn't working... unless the tumors are actually getting smaller, all you know for sure is that you are entertaining your neighbors. Billions of dollars are spent every year on cosmetics to make people feel better and to convince them that they are aging more slowly... I had a girlfriend in college that was already creaming herself up with afterbirth cream, every evening to "prevent aging".... Her skin was perfect, and she wanted to keep it that way... That was about 40 years ago... I don't know if it worked, but I would think if she still looks 18 I'd expect someone would have put her on youtube by now. 

Take a caliper, measure the tumor and if it's shrinking, you are on the right track, if the tumor is still growing you are most likely just messing with your own mind to make yourself feel better.

Best luck.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

BTW, I did look up Sulforaphane... it looks like an essential part of a rat's diet and is healthy when fed to your rats in the form of fresh veggies. Going along with the thinking that veggies are good for rats, it sounds like a good idea... but so far I haven't found any clinical proof that it cures mammary tumors... It strikes me more as something all rats need vs something to shrink tumors. One of those things that will do no harm, and will certainly help if your rats don't get enough veggies, but if your rats are already getting enough veggies and have enough Sulforaphane in their system... I'm not sure it will do much....

Check out Sodium Dichloroacetate. It works to attack a tumors ability to turn sugar into energy. It is a real cancer drug that's being tested on and used by humans. A pharmacist tells me she has human patients who use it and have had good results. Because it's actually a real drug... it's not easy to get except from shady on line dealers... or with a prescription. It's made by Sigma Aldrich. It comes in both research and medical grade... research grade isn't too expensive, but medical grade will cost you dearly. It was recommended to me by another member of this forum who's testing it on human brain tumors now. Supposedly it reduced tumor size in rat trials, before they started testing it on humans. Keep in mind that rat tumors are usually chemically induced in labs and aren't of the common mammary variety. So you're going to be pretty much out there on the cutting edge... but it does seem like a better idea than broccoli extract.

I'm not knocking health food stores, but if there was really was a silver bullet in them that really cured advanced cancer or eliminated rapidly growing tumors, there would be a line at the door every morning. 


Again, best luck.

Footnote, current government funded trials are still in prgress so DCA doesn't have any/many FDA approvals. It has been around for a long time and can not be patented, so no pharma company is taking it through trials. Some pharma companies are working on similar patent-able chemical compounds that they may be testing and bring to market.

It costs millions of dollars to get FDA approval, and simply put, no company is going to do it, if they can't patent the medication. It's currently available for research and off label use, even though there's a body of evidence showing it to be effective in some cases.


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## Gribouilli (Dec 25, 2015)

I'll look into sodium dichloroacetate, thank you They are already on Tamoxifen so I would have to check with my vet if they can be used together. A caliper is a good idea although right now the mammary tumors are so small that I wouldn't be able to pinch anything at all- but I'll keep that in mind. I was able to find scientific research papers in sulforaphane but many had only abstracts available online...I'll get in touch with the person who has been treating a few rats with sulforaphane and ask how much it did shrink the tumors, how long the rats lived...please go ahead Rat Daddy and paste your email to me so it isn't confusing for people who are reading that thread


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## Chloelol (Feb 15, 2016)

My rat recently just passed not long after having her second op for a mammary gland tumor. Hers both grew quite quickly, her last being the size of a ping pong ball, maybe a little smaller. She was fine with it though, continued to eat and drink and play with her sisters. She was also old, and me and my partner decided on having the surgery again earlier this month. Was it the right decision? I am not sure. She passed wednesday night.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

We've had three female rats with mammary tumors:

Fuzzy Rat started growing tumors in November. By February they was about six of them ranging from jelly bean to marble size. By April she was pretty debilitated and the largest of the tumors were nearly golf ball size and she had about 8 or 9, by July she was about 6 oz of rat and 22 oz of tumors and she couldn't crawl more than perhaps a foot an hour at best, as her rear feet didn't touch the ground.... During the last weeks of her life the tumors started sprouting tumors... Fuzzy Rat was bred for meat. Fuzzy Rat lived about 27 months.

Amelia started growing her single massive tumor around the same time as best I recall she made it nearly a year but it grew slowly and never spread. Amelia was a breeder cull high white. Amelia lived about 2 years.... but her mammary tumor was different from the other rats in the speed and how it developed.

Max, who was most likely from the same commercial breeder as Fuzzy Rat, started growing tumors pretty fast, she only lasted about 4 to 6 months from the onset. She was about 18 months old when she died. Oddly the tumors weren't that bad as compared to Fuzzy Rat and Max.

A chemist got me some Sodium Dichloroacitate to treat Max, but she passed away the day after we started treatment... it was too late by the time we got the medication... But in a strange way it must be working. Since we have the medication in the house, no other rats have developed tumors.

This isn't scientific, but it seems like the tumors start slowly and then pick up speed as they grow. I tried the mushroom capsules and the shark cartilage... they didn't really help... They kind of mess with your hopes so you sort of think they are working... But sooner or later you just have to face reality and accept the fact that the tumors are still growing... 

We've switched our rats to bottled water. I don't know if it helps, but it doesn't cost much... And as both Fuzzy Rat and Amelia started growing tumors about 3 weeks after we switched to Oxbow, we don't feed that anymore either... again, not saying it was the cause, just a creepy coincidence that two rats a year apart in age from different breeders and lines get tumors right after switching foods... 


These photo was taken a few months before Fuzzy Rat passed away... She was still doing pretty well at this point... She never complained and always played along with my daughter. Fuzzy Rat was buried in a plastic shoe box which she filled completely. She weighed over 28 oz at the time and there was very likely less than six ounces of rat left among the tumorous masses we could just about make out her spine in the blob. Her ability to communicate and tell us what she needed made it possible for us to be her legs and care for her. She died with the same grace and dignity that she lived her life or as much dignity as a 6 year old girl would afford her from time to time.... She made the most out of her life and she had an iron will and never gave up or gave in to the illness right up to the end when she asked to go to her cage one last time... 
















Her largest tumors were around her tail area and grew around her private parts. Thankfully they didn't obstruct anything important, but the micro surgery to remove or reduce them would have run over $2000.00 if done by the best vet in the state. And we pretty much all agreed that the way her tumors were spreading they would just come right back... That and another vet told us that she would not likely survive more than 3 weeks after the surgery... She lived until mid-July, quite a bit longer than anyone expected. At our last outing a little boy asked if she were an animated toy, because she could pretty much only move her head. But she still asked to let people hold her, she gave kisses and she asked to be put on the ground so she could snack on a corn cob someone dropped. Her eyes would grow dull, and she'd look like she was having senior moments... but she would still perk up and do her best to put on her act when people gathered around her... She couldn't preen herself any more towards the end and Amelia pitched in to keep her look at least a little bit tidy and when she became incontinent pretty much in the last week we washed or bathed her a few times a day..

In some regards, she still enjoyed her life and felt she had important things to do right up to her last day, she only let go, when there was absolutely nothing left for her to give... On her last day I asked if she wanted to go for a walk one last time... she declined, but she hung her head out of the second floor window to survey her domain for a long time and I spent most of that day holding her... There was not a second of her life that wasn't without purpose or wasted... even when most people might not consider it much of a quality of life... We're glad we didn't put her to sleep or opt for the surgery that would have killed her sooner. 

Mammary tumors are bad.... but they aren't the end. You can still do a lot in the time you have left. It's not necessarily about how long your rat has left to live, but what you do with the time you have....















These photos were taken in March or April I remember it was cool out... she was already mostly dragging her hind legs, but she pulled herself around to sniff things and she took in some sun and mugged for a few photos. When it got a little warmer, she would like to lay in the clovers and still would fend off ants to steal their moldy food she would find on the ground. And yes, she could still smell disgusting discarded food and would drag herself to it ever so slowly.... We put her up in trees to catch the breeze until she just started to fall off the branches... She enjoyed her life and we did the best we could for her. Every morning when we woke up we rushed to the cage to see if she was still with us.... it was pretty stressful, and it took a lot of work to care for her, but it was worth it, because she always made our day just a little bit better.

I do believe that there might be something that would shrink mammary tumors, but I'm thinking it's likely a real cancer drug and not a "super food". 

As to foods: Our rat Cloud was a junk food junky and a trash diver, I doubt she ever ate a veggie (that wasn't moldy or sour); although we always offered them to her fresh... She lived a healthy life, although she got pudgy and lazy at a year and a half old... and died of heart failure at two... Her cousin, Sophie was adopted by a friend who's a healthy foods freak and raised Sophie on all really good foods. Sophie is over 2 1/2 and just starting to slow down a little... Both rats are from a strain that apparently doesn't get mammary tumors... So I believe that diet helps to keep rats healthy and "prevent" tumors. But once rats actually have tumors, I think we're in the realm of oncology not nutritional supplements. The saddest part is that rats are used in most cancer medication trials, and most likely those drugs have to prove effective on rats before they give them to humans... But if you need those drugs for your rats or even want to read the research, all you hit is firewalls, legal restrictions and adds for broccoli extract, mushrooms or such silliness... 

I'm sorry about your recent loss... and I hope you find ways to make your sick rat's life as wondrous as possible. And I wish you and everyone who has a rat with tumors the best of luck in finding a cure or treatment that works... Just keep in mind that hope and optimism will make tumors look like they've stopped growing or are getting smaller until it wears off and you can't deny that they are twice the size. I've been there... and done that...

Best luck and keep us posted.


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## Finnebon (Jul 15, 2013)

My one girl who just turned 3 has a small-ish mammary tumor, her fist one. I first noticed it start growing (basically I just felt that there was a thickening and slightly nodular bits under her arm which grew) way back in February of this year. It's now the end of July, so it's been growing on her for over 5 months. I'm amazed at how slow it's been, It's only MAYBE the size of a small grape now which is great because she's so old now, and surgery isn't really an option because of her chronic URIs. They do grow faster the larger they get, so if surgery is an option, get it done when it's still small and easy to take out before it starts to crowd or invade other areas surrounding it which may make it impossible to remove, or unsafe to try to remove.

All my other girls' mammary tumors tend to blow up quickly. Usually close to doubling every month.


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