Can Bravecto cause kidney failure in dogs? A Complete Guide

Who says that Bravecto® flea and tick medication is killing dogs?

In a June 2015 Facebook post, a family reported that one of their dogs had died within a day of being given Bravecto® (Fluralaner) chews and that another of their dogs had nearly died after being given the same treatment at the same time. They also asserted that Bravecto® chewable tablets were responsible for the dog’s death and that several other dogs had died of liver and kidney failure shortly after taking the same medication. So what is the truth? Does Bravecto® kill dogs?

Does Bravecto Kill Dogs? The Short Answer Is No — Bravecto Doesn’t Kill Dogs

There are many causes of liver and kidney failure in dogs. If more than one dog in a family is stricken with organ failure at the same time, it’s logical to assume that the dogs were poisoned. What’s not logical to assume is that Bravecto® had anything to do with the deaths. To determine if Bravecto® was involved with this incident, we should look at the research on the safety of Bravecto®—discussed in more below.

If those dogs were brought into my veterinary hospital the first cause I would rule out is antifreeze poisoning (ethylene glycol toxicity). Antifreeze is everywhere—if it drips from a car’s radiator onto the ground, pets love to lick it up. Both dogs and cats think antifreeze tastes delicious, so it’s a fairly common cause of poisoning. Ingesting even a small amount can be quickly fatal—e.g. five tablespoons is enough to kill a medium-sized dog.

Are Pet Drugs & Medicines Dangerous?

How is it that people can be so sure a drug is dangerous while vets say the same drug is safe?

Vets will say:

I know these treatments well

I recommend them for my own patients

The drugs have been tested in clinical trials at far above normal doses

If a drug was dangerous, I would know

If a drug was dangerous, it would be recalled

Campaigners will say:

How do you explain all these animals who have got sick after taking the drug?

What about all these illnesses? How do we know if they are being caused by Bravecto?

The first thing is that no one is being malicious; there is no scam or hoax. These illnesses really happened. That’s not in doubt.

Some of the reports will be true, representing the percentage of adverse reactions we can expect with any treatment.

Most will be explained by the phrase drummed into me in statistics classes: “Correlation does not imply causation“. What does this mean?

A good example is the long-acting antibiotic injection Convenia. Here’s a very common real world scenario:

A cat comes in very sick, and clearly in danger. We can’t make a diagnosis from the physical exam, and need to order blood tests.

It’s not an option to do nothing while we wait for the results. If we can give pills we will, but that’s very difficult and stressful for many sick cats. Therefore we often recommend Convenia.

Now let’s say the worst happens and the cat gets worse or even dies. Was it the Convenia or the underlying disease? We simply don’t know. Convenia’s use is correlated with the death, but is not necessarily causative.

Here’s one where I was fooled.

If it wasn’t for the MRI I would have spent the rest of my career thinking vaccines cause paralysis. That’s how hard it is to know what’s safe.

For another view of the correlation-causation problem, have a look at these graphs. Who knew that eating cheese was correlated with being strangled by your bedsheets, or that when Nicholas Cage is in more films there are more swimming pool accidents? It’s true!

Sickness in animals is common enough that there will be many, many times when they are simultaneously on another treatment like Bravecto when they get sick. That’s not in doubt. The big question is: did the Bravecto cause the illness or would it have happened anyway?

Let me put it another way. Let’s say a dog gets sick once a year, so there’s a one in 12 chance a dog will get sick in any month. Therefore one in twelve dogs will get sick within one month of even a yearly treatment like ProHeart or a vaccine. The people whose dogs get sick may associate the sickness with the treatment, and they won’t be aware of the other 92% of dogs happily going along normally.

These events, whether rare or common, will be easily brought together by online groups. It’s the job of the regulators to decide if such events represent the standard rate of illness in the community or occur more commonly when taking the drug.

Kidney Failure In Dogs | Everything You NEED To Know | Veterinarian Explains | Dogtor Pete