When it comes to controlling domestic cat populations, “it’s a really different way to do contraception.”
Invasive surgeries to spay cats could one day be a thing of the past, replaced instead with a single shot. . None gave birth to a litter of kittens even after mating with a fertile male. The tactic, if it holds up in further testing, could offer a more efficient way to control a global population of feral cats that numbers in the hundreds of millions.
The experimental gene therapy targets anti-Müellerian hormone, also known as Müllerian inhibiting substance, a protein that helps fetal sex organs develop. After injection, a modified virus introduces the gene that makes the hormone into the cats’ cells. The cells then make more anti-Müellerian hormone than normal. High levels of the protein may prevent a cat’s ovaries from releasing eggs by keeping follicles — the structures that house and release eggs — in a dormant state.
The proof-of-concept study is “the first real sign of hope that we could do something besides spaying cats,” says Julie Levy, a veterinarian at the University of Florida in Gainesville who was not involved in the study. The single-dose injection is especially promising to control feral populations, eliminating the need to bring wild-living cats into a clinic for surgery or trap animals more than once to administer multiple doses.
The experimental gene therapy could be a better approach because it doesn’t rely on the immune system and instead makes more of something that the body already has, so the immune system ideally won’t get involved at all. The four treated cats that never bred with the males had spikes in estrogen levels, one sign of estrus. But you’d never have guessed that based on the cats’ behavior, Swanson notes. The females didn’t allow the males to breed, a sign those females weren’t in heat.
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