Professor Toru Miyazaki and his colleagues at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Medicine have revealed that acute kidney injury in cats is caused by the blood protein AIM.
Even in Japan, more than 1 million cats are owned as pets.It is known that cats die more frequently due to renal failure than other animals, and at 5 to 6 years of age, they suffer from acute renal damage due to urinary tract stones and nephritis, and around 15 years of age due to chronic renal failure and uremia. There are many cases of dying.However, it was a mystery why the cat's renal function did not recover and eventually led to fatal renal failure.
So far, the research group has said that when the renal tubules are clogged with dead cells (garbage) and renal function declines, a protein called AIM present in the blood is activated and migrates into the urine to quickly clear the clogged tubules. It was clarified that the renal function was improved promptly by doing so.
This time, we discovered that cats have different characteristics from mice and humans, and even if acute renal injury occurs, they are not activated and do not transfer to urine.Despite having enough AIM in the blood, cats are more likely to develop chronic renal failure without recovering kidney function even if acute renal failure occurs.
When a mouse (AIM cat-ized mouse) in which AIM was changed from a mouse type to a cat type was prepared for verification and acute renal injury occurred, the renal function continued to deteriorate and many died.Subsequent intravenous injection of AIM in mice resulted in rapid improvement in renal function and markedly reduced mortality.
As a result, it is possible to rapidly improve acute renal failure and avoid chronicity in cats by administering AIM in the same way as in humans and mice.Also, in human patients, expectations and reality for the treatment of acute renal failure and prevention of chronicity by AIM will be further increased.
