Keratin horn

Hi all,

I'm new to this forum but am hoping someone may have experience with the following:

One of my house bunnies, Poppy, (a lionhead cross rescue) has recently been back and forth to the vets with what has been tentatively diagnosed as a "keratin horn."
Our vet has "never seen one on a rabbit before, only dogs." The horn itself does not appear to hurt her or cause any discomfort and she is still able to eat/play and appears her usual self.
The horn has mainly appeared on her bottom lip and has been manually removed (literally pulled off) by the vet on several occasions however it keeps growing back. Now she has developed a second/third horn (two on her lip though think it is coming from the same site) on her eyelid. Prior to this, we were considering the possibility of surgery on the affected area of the lip, i'm still happy to persue this if it will help/cease the reproduction of another horn but am as yet unsure as to weather it will (seemingly, neither is our vet)
Yesterday evening, I took her back to the vets as noticed she was sneezing on Sunday.
Poppy was given antibiotics for her breathing/sneezes etc and whilst there, the vet (suprised at how rapidly it was being produced) removed the keratin horns from her lip and eyelid. The eyelid one looks very painful but again, doesn't appear uncomfortable to Poppy.

So, my question is, does anyone else have experience with this? What causes it? Is it life threatening? What if any is the treatment?
I have googled around and the closest I can find to Poppy's symptoms is "Shope papilloma virus" the pics are more extreme looking and appear like antlers..but even then, i'm stuggling to find information on causes, treatment etc.

Thanks x

Good grief I have never even heard of this but just read about it and seen some images. I really hope that your Poppy is treatable and gets over this.

Can you take a photo so we can see what you mean? Have any of the removed horns been sent for analysis? Has syphilis been ruled out or might that be a possibility? Sorry, more questions than answers I know!

Have you a photo? My first thought was syphilis as Tinkerbells growth looked like a horn.

Thank you all for your replies.
I don't have a photo of the horn(s) and can't take one now as they've been removed. I have added a photo below of the wound site on her eye where one was removed.
Whilst syphilis has not been ruled out (it's not been mentioned) the skin itself does not appear crusty/red/inflammed and her genital looks clean, clear and normal. I may well take her back and test for this purely to rule it out though.
The removed horns have not been sent for analysis (I feel rather silly now for not thinking about that at the time) :? perhaps because the vet didn't seem overly concerned and convincingly said it was keratin. I will need to wait until it starts to grow back in order to request that I guess?

The photo shows the removal site as very red. It was raw yesterday. It has healed over today and is dry so no longer open and she continues to take her antibiotics.



x

eeek, not sure how to add photo... the URL is www.photobucket.com/Poppyseye

Hmmm don't really know from the eye picture :?

Tinkerbell had hers removed, it was just above her lip, and sent for analysis and it turned out to be Syphilis.