Dr Otter, DVM

apparently, cats' kidneys tend to be the thing that takes them down, something about their bodies being unable to self-clean their kidneys, and the vaccine is supposed revitalize the body's ability to do just that. It would be very VERY fucking cool to have cats suddenly reaching 30 years of age be the normal thing.

dude cracked the case about WHY kidneys fail, across the board as far as i can tell. turns out there's a specific molecule whose job it is to attach to waste and signal macrophages to come eat it. it remains inactive in cats for some reason, but the molecule is still there. basically what he's done is found the switch to activate them. this will be profound not only for our domestic babies, but for big cats too - especially cheetahs!

although his research was focused on cats, it's already being used to develop drugs for humans too!

on top of that, since these molecules are tags for waste, this could also dramatically lower the rate of fatty liver disease, liver cancer, urinary crystals, rheumatoid arthritis, and even some neurological cases! like, they're hoping it may have an impact on parkinson's and alzheimers, but it DOES have an impact on stroke recovery. like. holy shit.

furthermore, he's insisting that the feline drug be affordable if and when it rolls out onto the market. he wants this to be something anyone can get for their cat!! idk how much sway he'll have over the human drug, but hopefully enough that it, too, won't be that expensive.

annnnnd in his research that he's still doing for the human side of things, he's found a potential link between this molecule and estrogen. in the 20,000 samples he's tested, women between ages 10 and 29 had the highest amount of this molecule present in their blood (a higher amount means Something Fucky is going on, essentially. There's a higher amount of waste the body is trying to clean out) but it drops down to be almost equal amongst men and women after menopause. it hasn't been looked into yet, but fuck, just the fact it's noted and known and probably WILL be looked into soon??? imagine if this is what leads to figuring out all the various ways the ovaries and uterus fucks with people and how to fix it. or even like, maybe there's something about estrogen that makes it work better. who knows! but it's rad the link is there to be researched :D

As for the study itself, the 360 day follow up on stage 3 kidney failure kitties showed that the control had a survival rate of about 20%, while the test group had a survival rate of 80%

Previously we had eliminated it from the US, but cuts to programs for monitoring and control reduced the ability to keep it that way, and now here we are. I hope there is enough capacity to prevent it from spreading any farther.

Previously we had eliminated it from the US, but cuts to programs for monitoring and control reduced the ability to keep it that way, and now here we are. I hope there is enough capacity to prevent it from spreading any farther.

One thing that drives me bonkers, especially in a professional context like trying to get a history for a sick animal, is that many people do Not Answer the Question I just asked and instead answer a tangentially related one that I Didn't ask.

E.g. "How often did he vomit over the past week?"

"He's vomited sometimes since he was a kitten, usually hairballs but one time last month it was his food all over my bed."

*Headdesk*

Previously we had eliminated it from the US, but cuts to programs for monitoring and control reduced the ability to keep it that way, and now here we are. I hope there is enough capacity to prevent it from spreading any farther.

Previously we had eliminated it from the US, but cuts to programs for monitoring and control reduced the ability to keep it that way, and now here we are. I hope there is enough capacity to prevent it from spreading any farther.

Previously we had eliminated it from the US, but cuts to programs for monitoring and control reduced the ability to keep it that way, and now here we are. I hope there is enough capacity to prevent it from spreading any farther.