It’s December and while most are excited about the holiday season, we at VetStem are excited about cats!  We have more than a few cat lovers at VetStem, Sue and Kristi, to name a few.  We figured, what better month than this to share new and exciting information about regenerative medicine for felines?!

You may remember some of our previous blogs about stem cell therapy for felines.  If you need a refresher, check out this recent post: Stem Cells for Cats: An Overview.  To summarize, veterinarians are using VetStem Cell Therapy to treat a number of conditions in cats.  In addition to osteoarthritis, the most commonly treated diseases include chronic kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and gingivostomatitis.

Veterinarians have also used our small animal platelet therapy kit for orthopedic conditions in cats.  Veterinary Platelet Enhancement Therapy (V-PET™) is used by veterinarians to collect and concentrate a patient’s platelets.  The platelet concentrate can be injected into joints, injured tendons and ligaments, as well as chronic wounds. 

One of our frequent users, Dr. Jeff Christiansen, recently treated a cat who had an FHO (surgery to remove the ”ball” of the hip ball-and-socket joint) utilizing V-PET™.  The cat suffered a fracture in his hip and platelet concentrate was injected into the joint after surgery.  Typically, cats will show signs of complete recovery from an FHO procedure at approximately six weeks post-surgery. In this cat’s case, he was comfortable and walking around with good range of motion at four weeks post-op. While the injury required surgical intervention, the addition of V-PET™ into the surgical site may have led to expedited healing.

Some more exciting news about cats is actually about cheetahs!  Dr. Matt Kinney of the San Diego Zoo Safari Park recently presented information at the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians conference regarding working with VetStem to treat a couple of cheetahs.  We hope to share more about this soon!  This is not the first time that VetStem has provided cell services and on-site consultation for the treatment of exotic animals.  A Sun Bear named Francis was another recipient of such services.

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