Health Rounds: Raw cat food poses risks for pets and their people

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(This is an excerpt of the Health Rounds newsletter, where we present latest medical studies on Tuesdays and Thursdays.)

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) -Commercial raw cat food, particularly products sold on shelves at room temperature, may pose a considerable health risk to cats and the families who care for them, according to an analysis of the products.

The analysis detected disease-causing microbes, including some that are resistant to antibiotics, the researchers reported in Communications Biology.

“Most of these products have no warning labels on them showing that the meat ingredients are not fully cooked, indicating that they could harbor live bacteria and potentially viruses and parasites that would make a family very sick,” study leader Laura Goodman of Cornell University said in a statement.

The researchers found Salmonella, Cronobacter and E. coli in raw or partially cooked meat sold frozen, refrigerated or freeze-dried in stores and online.

“Particularly for the freeze-dried products sold on shelves, consumers likely have no idea they are taking on that risk,” Goodman said.

They also found antibiotic-resistant pseudomonas, a bacteria that can cause serious, life-threatening lung, blood and urinary tract infections; Klebsiella, a bacteria that can cause fever, chills and fatigue, and potentially pneumonia and urinary tract infections; and Clostridium perfringens, the bacteria that leads to gastroenteritis in undercooked turkey and causes food poisoning around Thanksgiving.

“These pathogens can transfer from pets to humans and are of special concern for young children, and people who are old, pregnant and immunocompromised,” the researchers said.

Earlier studies have found antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria in raw dog food as well, the researchers also note.

When the researchers uploaded the results of their cat food study to a federal database, “there were indeed some human cases that were genetically very similar…,” revealing that people potentially were sickened from the same products studied, Goodman said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does test for a limited number of bacteria in raw cat foods, but the paper provides evidence of a wider range of pathogens that might be used to inform the agency’s future policies, the researchers said.

KILLING PAIN WITHOUT IMPEDING HELPFUL IMMUNE RESPONSE

Replacements for common over-the-counter painkillers might someday control pain without impeding potentially helpful inflammation, researchers suggested in a paper that could lead to changes in the way pain medicines are designed.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, which include aspirin and ibuprofen, are among the world’s most commonly used pain medications. They block enzymes that produce prostaglandins, which work with the immune system to promote inflammation by dilating blood vessels, increasing blood flow, and attracting white blood cells to the site of injury.

Prostaglandins also sensitize nerve endings, making them more responsive to pain signals.

Scientists have generally believed that preventing or reducing inflammation is what treats the pain. But inflammation – the immune system’s response to injury or infection – is sometimes beneficial, and inhibiting it might delay healing and recovery from pain.

As reported in Nature Communications, researchers have now found that a specific protein on the surface of prostaglandins, the EP2 receptor, is responsible for causing pain but not inflammation.

Delivering drugs to silence only the EP2 receptor removed pain responses in mice without affecting inflammation, they found.

“Inflammation can be good for you, it repairs and restores normal function,” study author Pierangelo Geppetti of New York University’s Pain Research Center said in a statement.

“To our great surprise, blocking the EP2 receptor… abolished prostaglandin-mediated pain but the inflammation took its normal course. We effectively decoupled the inflammation from the pain,” Geppetti said.

The researchers said they are exploring whether drugs that target the EP2 receptor could be used to treat pain in conditions like arthritis that would usually be treated with NSAIDs.

TINY CAPSULES FIGHT INFLAMMATION IN THE BRAIN

Researchers are developing tiny bioengineered capsules that can fight inflammation in the brain without triggering rejection by the immune system.

While inflammation can sometimes be helpful, such as for promoting wound healing, inflammation in the brain is linked to disabling conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

A team of bioengineers and neuroscientists has developed soft, gel-like capsules about the size of a grain of sand that can enclose human brain cells called astrocytes and be implanted into the brain.

Astrocytes within the capsules were engineered to secrete an anti-inflammatory protein called interleukin-1 receptor antagonist to the external environment, thereby significantly reducing inflammatory responses in test tube experiments and in the brains of mice, according to a report in Biomaterials.

“Because the capsules will form a physical barrier between the implanted astrocytes and brain tissue, (the astrocytes) are expected to locally secrete anti-inflammatory proteins while avoiding immune rejection and unwanted migration throughout the brain,” study leader Robert Krencik of Houston Methodist Research Institute said in a statement.

“Encapsulating cells in a way that shields them from immune (rejection) has been a central challenge in the field,” co-study-leader Omid Veiseh of Rice University said in a statement.

“Our hope is that this work will help move cell therapies closer to becoming real treatment options for patients with neurodegenerative disease.”

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(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)