Helping the Medicine Go Down

Cats are cats. Any cat lover knows they can transition from sweet and cuddly to stubborn and sassy with a mind of their own. That is especially the case when cats need to take medicine orally.

“Cats are incredibly difficult to medicate and there are just not a lot of good options,” says Amy Nichelason, a board-certified canine and feline practitioner and clinical assistant professor at the UW School of Veterinary Medicine.

Because of these challenges, pills sometimes must be forced into a cat’s mouth and throat — a method called dry swallowing. This approach can negatively affect the humananimal bond, increase inflammation of the esophagus, and make cats more apprehensive about future treatment. Liquid medication is typically easier to administer to cats, but acceptance of these formulations also depends on the flavor and type.

Hoping to contribute scientific evidence to this everyday predicament, Nichelason and colleagues recently compared flavor acceptance in liquid medications among cats. They published their findings in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. Although general cat flavor preferences are known, this was the first study to examine the acceptance of differently compounded flavors for cat medications.

In the study, healthy pet cats received a variety of flavorings, like chicken, beef, and fish, in unmedicated oil- and waterbased liquid formulas. Owners gave the cats different flavors at home and observed which their cats ate. However, no flavor stuck out as the favorite.

One interesting finding was that cats didn’t like sweet flavors in water-based formulations. This surprised Nichelason and her peers because cats lack the gene to taste sweetness, so it was intriguing that they actively disliked the sweet flavor.

Another standout finding was that owners struggled to accurately predict which compounding flavor their cat would like; owners’ perceptions of their cats’ preferences were only moderately associated with flavor acceptance.

Although no individual flavor was an overall winner, the cats favored oil-based flavorings over water-based flavorings. There were some trends toward flavor preferences (specifically, chicken and fish), but these findings were not statistically significant.

That said, cats remain picky. Sixty percent of cats didn’t like any of the oilbased flavors, compared to 85 percent that disliked the water-based flavors.

“It matches what we see in clinical practice: cats are just really hard to medicate,” Nichelason says.

Still, the study provides a stepping stone for improving cats’ compliance with medicine and guides what veterinarians should prescribe.

“The moral of the story is to try something that has the best odds of working,” Nichelason says. “What I took home from this as a veterinarian is that I should avoid sweet flavors and use oilbased flavorings when possible.”

Britta Wellenstein

Nichelason offers a few general recommendations to lessen the stress of medicating finicky felines:

• Try different formulations — chews, liquid, or tablets — based on what your cat likes. If you aren’t sure of their preference, many compounding pharmacies can provide unmedicated samples for your cat to try before adding a medication.

• Reward your cat with a treat or extra affection after any medication to reinforce a positive outcome.

• Be honest with your veterinarian. If the medication formulation isn’t working and it is creating stress, let your veterinarian know so you can work together to create a better medication plan.

Obscure Virus Could Pose Significant Health Risk

In a world still reeling from COVID-19, infectious disease researchers are eager to head off the next pandemic before it has the chance to spill over from animals to humans. But the scientific reality of pandemic prevention isn’t straightforward, and researchers have generally avoided making specific predictions about the potential of individual viruses to cause global disease.

Sometimes, though, a signal is so compelling it can’t be ignored. One such signal has prompted a group of scientists to sound the alarm about an obscure virus in wild African primates — despite the fact that neither the virus nor any of its close relatives have ever been documented in humans.

“It’s a pretty controversial prediction,” concedes Tony Goldberg, a professor of pathobiological sciences at the UW School of Veterinary Medicine.

Goldberg is part of the group warning that simian hemorrhagic fever virus and its family of simian arteriviruses could pose a significant health risk to humanity should the right conditions allow it to leap from wild primates to people.

Overheard

The group has demonstrated the virus’s ability to infect human cells and deftly evade the human immune system’s typical responses. They published their findings in the scientific journal Cell

The researchers say there is no known risk to people now, and there is no guarantee the virus will make the jump from wild primates. But Goldberg and his colleagues say it’s important to understand these viruses and the risks they could pose.

Goldberg and collaborators on other campuses carried out sophisticated laboratory analyses that inform the group’s assertions. Their most recent lab work stems from a decades-long effort by Goldberg and colleagues to hunt down and describe potentially dangerous viruses lurking in wild places.

In fact, Goldberg’s field work in the forests of Uganda first identified wild strains of simian arteriviruses — strains used to understand the virus’s infectious potential in this latest research. Read more: go.wisc.edu/wild-primate-virus

Will Cushman

Recent commentary by and about those at the SVM

“It’s like bringing the kids to daycare from different suburbs. As they commingle, that’s where the virus moves around on a global scale.”

“If your dog is showing any clinical signs of respiratory disease, they shouldn’t go to the party and you should get in touch with your vet.”

“Make sure your animals are getting their vaccines on time and boosting appropriately.”

“Because dogs don’t have occupational exposures and they don’t actively smoke, they would be a good model to study other environmental risks for bladder cancer.”

Bits of news from around the school

Elizabeth Alvarez , clinical assistant professor of primary care, was presented with the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges’ 2023 Distinguished Veterinary Teacher Award in March. The honor recognizes an educator whose sustained record of teaching excellence and ability, dedication, character, and leadership has contributed significantly to the advancement of the profession.

This winter, the active learning classroom in the UW School of Veterinary Medicine’s Renk Learning Center was named in honor of Linda Sullivan DVM’87 in recognition of her profound impact on the school, UW-Madison, the Madison community, and her philanthropic generosity to the SVM. A member of the school’s charter class and a treasured professor with the school from 1990-2019, Sullivan passed away from cancer in February 2022.

FluGen, a company founded by UW School of Veterinary Medicine faculty members Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Gabriele Neumann, announced an experimental intranasal flu vaccine that achieved a broad immune response, publishing the findings in the Journal of Infectious Diseases in November. FluGen is also working on a new way of protecting against flu and COVID-19 in one vaccine and is studying the same approach for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

This fall, UW–Madison was designated an Innovation and Economic Prosperity University by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities and ranked eighth in national research rankings for public and private universities in the National Science Foundation’s 2021 fiscal year Higher Education Research and Development data, reporting more than $1.38 billion in annual research expenditures.