A few months ago I wrote about a new antibiotic called Convenia. The medicine is available by injection and lasts for a week or longer, eliminating the need to give daily (or, in many cases, twice daily) doses of pills or liquids.
In my original post I mentioned a few reservations I had about prescribing the drug. One of my (not explicitly mentioned) reservations was that there were few independent clinical efficacy and safety studies published in peer-reviewed journals.
That is beginning to change. A study released in the January 1, 2009 Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) compared Convenia to a commonly used conventional antibiotic in cats. Here are the results.
Effectiveness of [Convenia] in the treatment of cats with abscesses and infected wounds was similar to that of [the conventional antibiotic]. There were no serious adverse events or deaths related to treatment. (J Am Vet Med Assoc 2009;234:81-87)
This study does not address the long term concerns about injection-site tumors in cats that I mentioned in the original post. But it, combined with my personal experience with the medication (which has been highly favorable), makes me feel better about using Convenia in cats who refuse to take oral medications.
