The title has simplified the story but it summarises it. A Japanese scientist, Doctor Toru Miyazaki, an immunology specialist at the University of Tokyo, has invented an injection which can be given to cats to extend their life by helping to prevent kidney disease. How does it work?
For many years, he’s been working on the problem of chronic kidney disease in cats which in Japan as elsewhere is a major reason for cats dying of old age prematurely. Cats have an average lifespan of about 15 or more years and the doctor thinks he can extend that to about 30 years!
Chronic kidney disease affects nearly 30% of cats by the age of 10 according to the report that I’m seeing on Yahoo!
AIM
And Doctor Toru says that a protein called apoptosis inhibitor of macrophage (AIM) helps kidneys flush out toxins using immunoglobulin antibodies.
AIM is present in the blood of many animals but he noticed that it does not function as well or as effectively in cats. This means that waste removal by cats’ kidneys is less efficient which makes them susceptible to kidney failure.
The good Doctor has a passion for cats. He’s dedicated years of research to developing an injection which rectifies the above-mentioned problem. It is called an AIM injection and targets the root cause of feline kidney disease.
His research suffered a setback during the Covid-19 pandemic when funding was stalled but he received $2 million in funding from cat lovers worldwide and left his job at his university to solely focus on developing the AIM injection.
It has shown promising results in clinical trials and exceeded expectations. It shows promise even in treating terminally ill cats.
The injection is expected to be commercially available by 2025 and he is working on making it affordable and accessible to all cat owners.
The source of the information is the Nextshark website which was picked up by Yahoo! News.
Comment
Comment: if this proves to be a genuinely workable and effective treatment for chronic kidney disease in cats it will have an enormously beneficial impact on domestic cat health and welfare worldwide. It is a major cat health story but this is early days.
He seems to have gotten to the bottom of the reason why domestic cats so often suffer from kidney disease. There may be other causes such as the preponderance of dry cat food of poor quality which exacerbates the problem. But I don’t know whether that is genuinely an issue. I do know that this research work might be incredibly valuable to the health of the worldwide population of domestic cats in due course.
