Alessandro Di Cerbo
University G. d Annunzio of Chieti-Pescara, Italy
Title: Unexpected high concentration of antibiotic residues in sera of cats
Biography
Biography: Alessandro Di Cerbo
Abstract
Food allergies and food intolerances are clinically difficult to discriminate and are classified as adverse food reactions, whose causes are numerous. We evaluated the effect of a nutraceutical diet in relieving evident clinical symptoms related to cutaneous adverse food reactions such as drooling, back and neck intense itching, neck eczema, chronic conjunctivitis and stomatitis and skin lesions in 18 indoor-housed clients-owned cats. Cytological evaluations of ear, skin and gingival swabs revealed an increased turnover of keratinocytes while the oxytetracycline ELISA determination showed an unexpected high amount of oxytetracycline in all cats at the first visit. All cats were then randomly assigned to receive a standard (SD group) or a nutraceutical diet (ND group) for 60 days. We observed a significant reduction of the mean serum concentration of oxytetracycline, pruritus intensity and skin lesion severity (p<0.01, p <0.001, and p<0.001, respectively) in the ND group as well as a significant improvement in the clinical picture. Although a direct correlation between oxytetracycline presence within cat sera and CAFR-related symptoms has never been described, this study highlights the benefit of a specific nutraceutical diet supplementation in improving clinical symptoms and skin lesions in cats with CARF.