# So I cured SLS



## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

rescued some p. bicolor from a really shoddy pet store that both had sls just because they'd lived this long and we're being kept abhorrently so I wanted to give them a little happier a place to live... a ways back I reported on dusting with freeze dried phytoplanktons, I've been doing it since with all my frogs with insane results, in coloration especially. It's a superfood, chock full of nutrients far beyond that any other single food item. So after about 3 months of regular feeding with 2x weekly dusting my frogs legs look totally normal. So, uh, yea. That's that then. If anyone has any SLS froglets they were going to put down, please by all means send them my way so I can cure them and add them to my collection


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

I'm gonna have to call BS on this one, no offense. You can't cure spindly leg, it's a developmental problem, not a traditional 'disease.'


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## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

Well considering the mode of action behind SLS has only been theorized about, definitively calling it a developmental disease is extremely presumptuous. Not to mention that i vastly simplified my post and if ypud like to get into the finer points of nutritional deficiencies and the respective morphology, please by all means ask away. So call bs all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that it happened and that just because you don't know something doesn't mean that someone else doesn't either.


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. An anecdotal report of 'curing' 2 frogs is not extraordinary evidence. Problems off the top of my head:

A) diagnosed by you and not a vet
B) no history of health on those frogs is available
C) No pictures for us to look at (we all like pictures after all)
D) We've got a fairly good idea of what causes spindly leg now


On top of a whole host of other issues with your 'cure' being totally un-scientific in it's approach. I'm a biologist, fire away with your 'finer' details and we'll chat.


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## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

Yes, as am I. By education and trade. What would you like to know other than just being combative? I'd be surprised if I didn't take pictures of these frogs when I got them. Might take some digging but I'll post before and afters for you. I'll admit the possibility exists that these frogs symptoms were from general malnurishment, however their main body masses were relatively healthy in appearance, just with toothpicks for legs. Yes, this is anecdotal evidence. As is the existence of SLS. As well as just about every other aspect of this hobby. So for everyone who doesn't just 'call bs' assuming the guy on the other end of the web is simply an idiot, this is still a potentially VERY exciting discovery to have stumbled across worthy of further research at the very least, anecdotal or not.


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## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

It was 'Un-scientific', in technical terms, because I stumbled on it. I used this treatment for its remarkably high carotenoid and amino acid content as a color and overall vitality enhancer.


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## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

So, like I said. Send me sls frogs and I'll continue my research. And assuming others on the Internet are interested in learning new ideas over repeating old ones, I'll continue to hypothesize and post results until I have enough evidence to confidently confirm my theory, which is that sls is possibly a developmental condition caused by nutritional deficiencies, along the lines of head and lateral line erosion seen in fish, of which I am thoroughly familiar with. In which case, the animal uses nutrients from its own body for vital biological processes. While not completely able to be cured, you can reverse significant amounts of damage by simply reintroducing the missing nutrients.. which the marine biology community believes to be primarily lipid soluable vitamins and amino acids.. which also happen to be the theorized deficiencies behind SLS.


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## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

I have to apologize because it seems I actually did not take any early pictures. I hadn't expected them to survive, I wasn't particularly excited about them so I guess I didn't bother. I just wanted to save them from the deplorable conditions they were being kept in for the time they had left. Regardless of the two of them, one is totally healthy looking now, one was showing a little worse symptoms and still could fill out the legs a hair more before being totally back to healthy appearance(I'd say he's 75% of the way there) so next time he comes out I will snap a pic of him and the other to show the current difference. Then, as I wholeheartedly expect to continue seeing results I will report back as he continues to improve with more pictures. Naturally, I'm not saying definitively that I have a cure for SLS, just that I cured 2 frogs. Because as far as my educated and experienced knwledge tells me, I have, and so shall now use this realization to complete some ACTUAL research. I posted so that, instead of denial, I may arouse some curiosity- being the powerful force that it is- amongst other actual scientists and maybe someone else out there will try to replicate my results.. and thus a scientific analysis may actually arise. Science starts with observation, a biologist ought to know that very well, this is an observation, what follows that is a hypothesis, which I've also given. So if your ideology is that non-linear experimentation has no place in the community then I simply do not understand how you can possibly consider yourself a scientist.


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## frograck (May 1, 2005)

pics or it didn't happen. this IS the internet you know.


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## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

Look guys, I'm not trying to get kudos for this. I'm sharing results. I'll post pics when I have them but like I said, this wasn't the intention of this treatment. I do it for all my frogs for the stated reasons, I've just never had any SLS in my froglets and I wasn't trying to cure these 2. So as time went by and they kept looking healthier, the concept occurred to me. Now they've improved enough that i can confidently say SOMETHING must have caused it, and as stated the theorized cause of SLS is similar to that of hle in fish and this treatment is a potential cure for that condition. I do also put water and lipid soluable (in polysorbate20) vitamins into my automated misting system, which could also have impacted them however I'm not giving them anything that other don't already do as well. Being that the phyto is really the only thing I can be relatively certain that others are not trying AND that it cures a condition with a similar biological mode of action in other oralganisms(as far as we know), that is what I have chosen as my hypothesized catalyst. I plan to continue researching this, regardless of resistance to new ideas, however I will need more specimens before I can continue and, again, like I said my tanks have never produced a frog with sls so I need some that have. By the way, I morph out 20-30 frogs per week and never having had an issues also supports my hypothesis, you can't form a deficiency in an environment rich on the compound in question after all.


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## 55105 (Jan 27, 2015)

I'd like to see pics too


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## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

Okay okay lol I took a couple just now. Here is the one that was slightly worse off.. as you can see his legs are not quite 100% healthy nor are they bad enough to be in the range of SLS. Almost like they're recovering. Also note the contouring, sls legs are pretty uniform the whole length vs healthy legs have muscle contour. This little guys legs have musculature to them but are still fairly uniform as of yet. The others have filled in normally by this point. Best I can do of current. If you still dont believe me, then please prove me wrong. Or if you do believe me. Or prove me right, I don't care. The implications of my hypothesis could potentially have enormous impact on a common condition that affects this hobby, I don't want to see it ignored simply because it was an accident and since I prematurely gave these guys a death sentence, don't have photographic evidence. Just take this theory as that, we don't have to bring personal beliefs or ego into this, science doesn't advance by shooting down new ideas simply because they're new ideas.


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## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

I'd say he's about 75% of the way there judging by the condition I found him in.. where his legs had just looked like skin tightly drawn over the bone.. by the way, it was stated that I am not a vet, and seeing as sls is not actually an officially recognized condition- it's a syndrome- then id like to see the vet that DOES diagnose it... and since its obviously a concern for some of you, well I am a marine biologist and botanist with a focus in ethnobotanicals and pharmacology, as well as a significant amount of engineering education though no formal degree.. I spend all my own free time and money running experiments for no reason other than to satiate my own questions and have an enormous amount of respect for science and curiosity in its whole. I'm not just some uneducated hobbyist that jumps to conclusions for no reason, I've been pondering this possibility for over a month before saying anything, and like I said.. they had sls, now they don't. I felt I'd am massed enough reason behind my hypothesis that it was worthy of sharing, I just didn't plan on typing 10 pages of my full observations because this is an initial hypothesis only. While I can't be certain I'm onto the right reason for it, it doesn't change the fact. There's something here, I thought by coming online and sharing my experiences that I may find people who are also curious and could collaborate with me as to the validity of my observations and so speed up and increase the accuracy of this investigation... not just given unfounded negative response with zero evidence to support their claims from people lacking adequate information or education to positively contribute. Opinions are not science, you may as well just say 'GOD DID IT' for all the credence you're going to receive here. Disagreeing with me is wholeheartedly welcomed, especially if there's valuable information I can glean from it, thats how we learn but not if your only reason is because someone else said so and you don't even understand why because that's simply ego.


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## Caden (Jan 9, 2010)

I was under the impression that SLS is a developmental defect where froglets morph with severe forelimb deficiencies, resulting in failure to move and eat properly and ultimately death due to malnutrition. If this is the case, modifying the supplementation of already afflicted froglets would be futile. If the frogs you obtained were past the first few months of age, I would suspect that they were not afflicted with the SLS which debilitates froglets and forces breeders to resort to euthanasia. There is a significant difference between having skinny front legs and having crippled front legs.

The mode of action of SLS is not just something that has been theorized about, there has been hard but unpublished data showing it can be caused by parental nutrition and tadpole water conditions. 

People being skeptical of the validity of your claims are not being combative or attempting to personally attack you. For someone who is a biologist by education and trade I am surprised that you are unaware of the prevalence and necessity of skepticism in the scientific community. Even studies with what seem to be very black and white definitive findings are prone to intense skepticism over the details like confounding variables, controls, etc, and rightly so: the propagation of false information is arguably more harmful than slowing the development of new ideas.

If you make a claim like yours, you can't get defensive when people ask for comprehensive evidence and expect to be taken seriously.


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## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

I'm fully aware of the source for your information on sls being from parental malnutrition, and whilst the write up was valid in its observations, that was not a hard scientific study, merely more anecdotal observations like mine here. I thought the word hypothesis was enough, but clearly that's being overlooked.. this is a HYPOTHESIS. nowhere do I state that my theory is factual. And being that the current accepted model of SLS places it as a nutritional deficiency that causes developmental problems.. and not a developmental condition.. there will obviously be varying degrees of the resulting afflictions based on the availability of the nutrients in deficit. If this condition behaves the way that the model I'm working with says it does then there will absolutely be scenarios in which permanent damage is sustained, as with HLE in fish that I keep drawing analogs to. In both cases these are conditions not seen in nature where a full battery of dietary nutrition is available, only once put into enclosed systems that are incomplete. So yes, a froglet that develops with a major deficiency may not even fully develop front legs at all, nothing you can do there. However, development in living organisms is prioritized, where nutrients can be redirected to more vital bio processes from where they were ideally supposed to go. So in cases where there is a less devastating deficit, I am merely suggesting that a treatment may exist.


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## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

And yes, 'calling bullshit' about a hypothesis is as far from scientific as it gets. That is being combative unless you include relevant data to conflict with my observations. Short of that, it's an opinion. I stated something that happened and my theory as to why. How is that such a difficult thing to understand? If you don't want to believe me for no good reason then please do so and keep it to yourself. If you dont understand, ask questions and maybe I can help you to. If you have reasons to contradict what I've stated then please by all means share those reasons so that we may have an educated discussion that either furthers my hypothesis for you or gives me a better understanding that may incline me to alter or abandon it. I keep being called out as being less than scientific but do any of you even know scientific process??? Because it's being followed here. True experimentation hasn't even begun, you're calling observations into question, not conclusions and that is detrimental to the advancement of knowledge.


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## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

By that ideology, you as a doctor could encounter a patient that tells you, I've cured myself of an incurable disease by doing these steps and your only response would be bullshit you never had the disease. All the while that person knows damn well they did in fact have it but now you don't get to learn more because you just knew better for no reason... Science begins with observation and an open mind kids... Unless you've got something to contribute, simply saying I'm wrong but you don't know why isn't going to get you very far.


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## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

I'm not even contradicting the current model of SLS. Which if you are as intimately aware of as I am, you'd understand that I am merely adding an element of varying degrees to that same model and suggesting a highly nutritionally complete(the foremost on the entire planet) dietary supplement that could potentially have a positive impact. If hle goes too far in fish, it will kill them. If it goes far enough, it will leave them disfigured. If you treat it before it's advanced to that point then full recovery time is merely dependant on the severity of the symptoms, it can take years to rectify the damage. The conditions are very similar however more is understood about hle than sls, so I'm drawing parallels between the two where they exist. It's a hypothesis, and all of you are saying what exactly... that I shouldn't bother to investigate it!?! That's madness.


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## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

So perhaps I should just delete my observations. Would that make you all happy? After all, even though it worked, obviously nobody on the planet would ever want to know about it. Then I'll go on to examine my hypothesis as planned and should it yield positive results.. I'll just keep them to myself because it would make people feel like they don't know everything and we wouldn't want that. Can't have people's egos getting hurt simply in the name of advancing knowledge now can we?? This happened. Period. I don't care if you don't belive me, because I was there and you were not. I will be investigating into this now that I have decided that there IS something to investigate and you're not going to convince me to do otherwise with anything short of technical data fully detailing the biological pathways that are responsible for this condition that contradicts my theories. I had hoped for discussion, whether skeptical or not, that I may get more background information to move forward with from someone else who may have a better understanding than my own because, even though this intersects with several of my areas of study, I am by no means an expert and have a lot to learn. Which I am trying to do. Please stop trying to tell me I should not, the meaning I have assigned to my existence is the quest for knowledge and I intend to continue on that path.


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## PanicButton (Jul 8, 2016)

Furthermore limb regeneration in amphibians is unprecedented anywhere else in the animal kingdom and still not fully understood.. so you're telling me that you can definitively say that a young froglet can completely regrow a lost limb but the concept of them just repairing a deficiency is not even remotely POSSIBLE??? Get outta here with that closed-minded mentality. I'm not going to limit myself simply because someone says no but not why.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

PanicButton said:


> Well considering the mode of action behind SLS has only been theorized about, definitively calling it a developmental disease is extremely presumptuous.


Where did you get this idea?? In fact they have been able to induce SLS in frogs by disrupting retinoic acid availability during development. 

See Lee SY, Elinson RP. Abnormalities of forelimb and pronephros in a direct developing frog suggest a retinoic acid deficiency. Applied Herpetology. 2008;5:33–46. 

and Elinson RP, Walton Z, Nath K. Raldh expression in embryos of the direct developing frog Eleutherodactylus coqui and the conserved retinoic acid requirement for forelimb initiation. J Exp Zoolog B Mol Dev Evol. 2008;310:588–595

This is supported by the anecdotal evidence of switching to a preformed source of vitamin A in the supplements and the huge reduction in the reporting of SLS in frogs. 




PanicButton said:


> So call bs all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that it happened and that just because you don't know something doesn't mean that someone else doesn't either.


Whatever happened it wasn't curing SLS, as that would require changes in the development pre-metamorphosis as by definition the deformations caused by SLS are structural involving the whole limb and include shortened bones, failure of tendons and other structures to reach the required lengths. 

for the definition of SLS I suggest checking out the following 

Hakvoort, J. H. M., E. J. Gouda and P. Zwart. 1995. Skeletal and muscular underdevelopment (SMUD) in young tree frogs (Dendrobatidae spp.). Proc. 5th int. symp. Pathol. Rept. Amphib 

Claunch, Natalie, and Lauren Augustine. "Morphological Description of Spindly Leg Syndrome in Golden Mantella (Mantella aurantiaca) at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park." Journal of Herpetological Medicine and Surgery 25.3-4 (2015): 72-77.

You could in theory fix it by cutting off the limbs and then stimulating the stem cells to regrow the limb as occurs in caudates but you cannot cause the limb structures to be totally reworked through nutrition.

some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

PanicButton said:


> Furthermore limb regeneration in amphibians is unprecedented anywhere else in the animal kingdom and still not fully understood.. so you're telling me that you can definitively say that a young froglet can completely regrow a lost limb but the concept of them just repairing a deficiency is not even remotely POSSIBLE??? Get outta here with that closed-minded mentality. I'm not going to limit myself simply because someone says no but not why.


The simple answer is yes. There are multiple studies involving limb regeneration and none of them fit your claims .... Your "supplement" really isn't anything novel in the diets of the frogs in captivity particularly in the last 8-10 years so your suddenly making claims that aren't supported anecodotally, or scientifically. 

some comments 

Ed


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## carola1155 (Sep 10, 2007)

PanicButton said:


> It's a superfood, chock full of nutrients far beyond that any other single food item.


Why do I feel like this thread is an advertisement for something you'd see on doctor Oz?
"Superfoods" don't exist. They aren't a real thing. All they are is marketing.



TarantulaGuy said:


> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.


^I'm with him. We don't need snake oil salesmen on here. We deal with enough scammers as it is.


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## Stryker (Nov 7, 2016)

People have cured things in the past that were thought incurable. But I will say this on the matter, it was done with clinical test. There were study groups and control groups. The patients were confirmed to have the actual aliment and some were giving a new drug while others were giving a placebo. Then all these findings were documented.

I think the original poster needs to show us photos of a control group and documentation of an overall study into the matter. Show us confirmed documentation that the frogs have SLS from a vet. Then as all studies go split the group into a control and test group and then again document the changes between the two groups.

I am sorry but if I came out tomorrow saying I discovered the fountain of youth and had no proof I would indeed get some suckers to buy my water, but the majority of people would have serious doubts unless I could clinically prove my statements and That's where your problem lies. Get a CONFIRMED diagnosis of SLS from a vet. Mark the frog so there is no doubts its the same frog. Keep daily records and then once cured, get a CONFIRMED diagnosis from a vet that it is cured and then people will believe you.


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

PanicButton said:


> Furthermore limb regeneration in amphibians is unprecedented anywhere else in the animal kingdom and still not fully understood.. so you're telling me that you can definitively say that a young froglet can completely regrow a lost limb but the concept of them just repairing a deficiency is not even remotely POSSIBLE??? Get outta here with that closed-minded mentality. I'm not going to limit myself simply because someone says no but not why.


See:

_Evolution of animal regeneration: re-emergence of a field.	
Alexandra E. Bely, Kevin G. Nyberg. 
Trends in Ecology & Evolution, March 2010_ 

Regeneration exists across a huge variety of taxa, certainly not limited to just amphibians, nor are they the ones that 'do it best.'


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## oldlady25715 (Nov 17, 2007)

If the phylobates had SLS they would not have be alive and would have died shortly after metamorphosis because they can't eat without being able to use the front legs. I think the OP just inherited malnourished frogs.


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## MasterOogway (Mar 22, 2011)

PanicButton said:


> By the way, I morph out 20-30 frogs per week and never having had an issues also supports my hypothesis, you can't form a deficiency in an environment rich on the compound in question after all.


Slightly off topic, I'd be most interested in seeing your setup and your system for dealing with 1000+ froglets a year, that's a lot of work! Gotta have a crazy frog room for that, we all like pictures of frog rooms!


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

oldlady25715 said:


> If the phylobates had SLS they would not have be alive and would have died shortly after metamorphosis because they can't eat without being able to use the front legs. I think the OP just inherited malnourished frogs.


This isn't entirely accurate as you can have frogs with only one front leg with SLS (generally the left) ranging from minimally affected to absent. In the frogs where the one affected leg is semi-functional you can get survival and growth. Additionally you can get frogs that have semi-functional deformations (this is why it is considered a spectrum disorder) and the frogs are able to function despite the deformations however frogs with one absent or severely affected front leg or both the front legs bady affected with deformations are as you correctly pointed out going to die after metamorphosis generally from starvation if they are not euthanized. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Barry Thomas (Oct 9, 2014)

Sounds like you nursed some sick/malnourished frogs back to health. Kudos to you. That is worthwhile and deserves appreciation. 
Your mistake was claiming to have "Cured" anything other than poor husbandry.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Stryker said:


> People have cured things in the past that were thought incurable.


Yes there have been "incurable" diseases that have been cured but there are no cases where deformations involving the bones and tendons that were already present being cured via diet. To resolve deformations of bones, and tendons that are already present requires surgical intervention, breaking and resetting of the bones to correct the deformations. This process cannot be initiated via diet alone and hence why there is a lot of skepticism for these claims. 

some comments 

Ed


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## Stryker (Nov 7, 2016)

Ed said:


> Yes there have been "incurable" diseases that have been cured but there are no cases where deformations involving the bones and tendons that were already present being cured via diet. To resolve deformations of bones, and tendons that are already present requires surgical intervention, breaking and resetting of the bones to correct the deformations. This process cannot be initiated via diet alone and hence why there is a lot of skepticism for these claims.
> 
> some comments
> 
> Ed


I was not saying that SLS is curable with diet, I was merely calling out the OP to provide proof to his claims and that included more than one frog and a frog with a confirmed case of SLS. I believe that the frog he "saved" was merely malnourished and had no SLS.


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