Feline Chronic Cholangiohepatitis: Common Symptoms and Prevention Methods, a Must-Read for Cat Owners
Feline Chronic Cholangiohepatitis: Common Symptoms and Prevention Methods, a Must-Read for Cat Owners
Do you remember our previous articles about feline liver diseases? Yes, it's feline fatty liver! (For details, please click: Feline Fatty Liver).
What we are going to talk about today also belongs to liver diseases. It is the second most common liver disease in cats, only after feline fatty liver and 3354 feline cholangiohepatitis, or directly called feline chronic hepatitis.
Note that feline chronic hepatitis in this article refers to feline chronic cholangiohepatitis, which should be distinguished from acute hepatitis. In veterinary medicine, chronic hepatitis, feline inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and pancreatitis are also known as feline triad or feline trias (previous articles about feline IBD have also been elaborated in detail, see: Feline Inflammatory Bowel Disease).
As the saying goes, "You don't know if you're sick, and you're scared when you are sick." Feline chronic cholangiohepatitis is as stubborn as all kinds of feline fatty liver. As a shoveler, you must have a good understanding and do early preventive work in time. In this way, you won't be at a loss when your cat really gets this disease.
After all, the early symptoms of this disease are almost undetectable.
Let's take a look at what kind of cat disease this is!
What is feline cholangiohepatitis?
The familiar feline liver disease is fatty liver, and the feline cholangiohepatitis we are talking about now is also a common liver disease. Although its prevalence is lower than fatty liver, it is also a complex and challenging disease.
From the physiological anatomy of feline liver, we can see that, unlike humans and dogs, cats share the pancreatic duct and bile duct. Its liver can produce bile, which is then transported to the gallbladder, and then the gallbladder transports the bile to the small intestine through the pancreatic duct to digest food.
The location of hepatitis is not simple. The liver, gallbladder, pancreas and small intestine of cats grow in very close and complex locations.
Among these important tissues, the liver is often inflamed along with the surrounding gallbladder, pancreas or small intestine, hence the trias.
In other words, hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver, but it's not just a liver problem. It often involves more than we can imagine.
As we emphasized earlier, cholangiohepatitis in this article is mainly chronic, which means cholangiohepatitis can also be acute, but with a lower incidence. Young male cats are more susceptible to this disease. They may be reluctant to eat immediately, then have poor spirits, accompanied by symptoms such as fever, vomiting or stomach pain (screaming when touched), and then their skin, gums and eyes will turn yellow (jaundice).
It is important to emphasize that acute cholangiohepatitis is rare, and chronic cholangiohepatitis is the most widely affecting one.
Generally, middle-aged cats and even older cats are more susceptible to chronic cholangitis, which can be divided into neutral cholangitis, lymphocytic cholangitis and chronic cholangitis caused by liver flukes.
Because the symptoms of chronic hepatitis are not obvious, it is difficult for people to find out. It is difficult to say whether the sick cat is good or bad, and it is difficult to grasp. Generally speaking, these will damage the cat's liver, and even lead to cirrhosis.
Moreover, this disease is becoming more and more common in modern pets and domestic cats, and shovelers should be vigilant.
Although the symptoms of chronic hepatitis are not obvious, we can infer from some clinical symptoms.
What should we do? Once the cat shows these symptoms, take it to the hospital for a comprehensive physical examination, so that some diseases can be diagnosed and followed up.
What are the possible symptoms of feline chronic hepatitis?
As mentioned earlier, the symptoms of feline chronic hepatitis are almost undetectable. Now we just infer chronic hepatitis through some clinical symptoms, which means that other diseases may also have these symptoms.
Once you find that your cat has these symptoms, the first thing you should do is take it to the hospital for a good check-up, give it more careful care and treatment.
All cats may be picky eaters, but cats with chronic liver disease have weaker intelligence and are more likely to be picky eaters. This is a manifestation of their complete lack of specificity.
To be more specific, it is like this:
1. Neutral cholangiohepatitis
Cats of all ages are susceptible to neutral cholangiohepatitis, mainly occurring in young to middle-aged cats. The typical symptoms are lethargy, fever and jaundice caused by bile stasis and sepsis.
It is worth noting that this disease is generally acute, but the incidence of acute disease is low, or even case reports of chronic disease. Therefore, if taken out alone, these symptoms are still very likely to be chronic cholangiohepatitis.
2. Lymphocytic cholangiohepatitis
Typical lymphocytic cholangiohepatitis mainly occurs in middle-aged cats, and Persian cats are the most common breed. Sick cats often have a history of months to years of disease, with symptoms including weight loss, intermittent anorexia, lethargy and jaundice.
Unlike neutral cholangiohepatitis, lymphocytic cholangiohepatitis rarely causes fever. About 1/3 of sick cats have high-protein ascites, so you need to know the difference between this disease and feline infectious peritonitis.
3. Chronic cholangitis caused by liver flukes
Common symptoms of this disease include lethargy, weight loss, anorexia, abdominal pain and vomiting. Too many liver flukes will cause jaundice.
The manifestations of chronic hepatitis are difficult to detect. It may be that you are just casually picking some food, or it may be that you are in a slightly poor state. You are lazy to move, and you like to sleep in. These are early manifestations.
Some cats have excellent appetites, but their weight remains the same. It may be that chronic hepatitis hinders the absorption of nutrients.
We have also said that chronic liver disease is closely related to the small intestine and pancreas, so before discovering chronic hepatitis, it is possible to be admitted to the hospital due to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) or pancreatitis.
These are the general symptoms of feline chronic liver disease. Still, that said, this disease is almost impossible to detect in the early stages, so it has a lot to do with our daily care and how to prevent cats from developing chronic liver disease through these daily care.
How to prevent feline chronic cholangiohepatitis?
Cats are pure carnivores. Feeding cats natural, fresh, abundant and nutritionally balanced raw and cooked meat is definitely the best preventive method. When making raw and cooked meat, you must do your homework in advance to avoid missing the health and nutrition of your cat.
1. Feed less or no cat food
The prevention of feline fatty liver is the same. Poor diet, such as long-term feeding of single, low-quality cat food, will greatly affect the cat's liver health.
Changing and optimizing your cat's diet is a helpful measure for almost any cat disease.
You need to know that pet food companies can make a lot of profits by selling a lot of dry cat food, using as little as possible of the right meat in the raw materials and adding more starch and substitute plant protein. These carbohydrates are useless to cats, and long-term use can even cause various cat diseases.
"Poor diet can be devastating to a cat's immune and lymphatic systems."
Reduce the frequency of feeding cat food and slowly switch to dry food until the cat receives a balanced proportion of raw and cooked meat. Then, you can use cat food as a snack, once or twice a week, or finally, don't feed it directly.
Pay attention to the gradual change of food. Eating more meat is very beneficial to the health of cats.
2. Reasonable diet
Commercial pet food definitely has its downsides if eaten too much, which is a big possibility factor for cats to develop chronic liver disease.
But in today's pursuit of convenient and quick pet keeping, almost no one will directly refuse to feed cat food. So my suggestion is that cats should eat more wet food, including main food cans and home-cooked food, and wet food should account for at least half. You can click the previous article about home-cooked cooked meat: How to make a nutritionally balanced home-cooked meal?
Wet food has high water content, good quality, rich in protein, and almost zero carbohydrates. It is the best food source for cats.
If you have to feed dry wolf, pay attention to choosing high-quality cat food, using meat as raw materials, high in animal protein, low in carbohydrates, and supplemented with eggs to enhance nutrition.
3. Feed at regular intervals and in fixed amounts, eat less and more often.
What you feed your cat is important, and the frequency and method of feeding should also be noted.
Timing has been emphasized many times. The general calorie requirement for adult cats is about 200 kcal. After conversion, cat food generally needs 60~70g/day, while meat or canned food is 200g/day. Therefore, after knowing the daily intake of your cat, you can divide it into three meals a day: one meal in the morning, one meal at noon, and one meal in the evening. If you still have the energy, try to let your cat eat less and more often.
Studies have shown that cats eat 20 or more times a day.
4. Take good vitamin supplements.
According to existing clinical evidence, it has been found that cats with liver disease need to supplement vitamins in addition to their diet. Cats with cholangiohepatitis have lower intestinal absorption capacity for nutrients, so supplementing vitamins is key to nutritional management.
The early symptom of suspected cat liver is picky eating. Vitamins are incomplete in picky eating. Cats that don't eat or drink well are very likely to be deficient in vitamins. Cats should be supplemented with some vitamins on a daily basis.
Vitamins that can be supplemented include vitamin E, vitamin K, vitamin B12, etc. If possible, taurine, folic acid, and L-carnitine can be used according to standards.
That's it for today. I am a noisy family with ten cats. This article is an original work by Jiemao Jiaozhu. Welcome to like and follow. More dry cats are waiting for you~ ~ ~
Do you remember our previous articles about feline liver diseases? Yes, it's feline fatty liver! (For details, please click: Feline Fatty Liver).
What we are going to talk about today also belongs to liver diseases. It is the second most common liver disease in cats, only after feline fatty liver and 3354 feline cholangiohepatitis, or directly called feline chronic hepatitis.
Note that feline chronic hepatitis in this article refers to feline chronic cholangiohepatitis, which should be distinguished from acute hepatitis. In veterinary medicine, chronic hepatitis, feline inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and pancreatitis are also known as feline triad or feline trias (previous articles about feline IBD have also been elaborated in detail, see: Feline Inflammatory Bowel Disease).
As the saying goes, "You don't know if you're sick, and you're scared when you are sick." Feline chronic cholangiohepatitis is as stubborn as all kinds of feline fatty liver. As a shoveler, you must have a good understanding and do early preventive work in time. In this way, you won't be at a loss when your cat really gets this disease.
After all, the early symptoms of this disease are almost undetectable.
Let's take a look at what kind of cat disease this is!
What is feline cholangiohepatitis?
The familiar feline liver disease is fatty liver, and the feline cholangiohepatitis we are talking about now is also a common liver disease. Although its prevalence is lower than fatty liver, it is also a complex and challenging disease.
From the physiological anatomy of feline liver, we can see that, unlike humans and dogs, cats share the pancreatic duct and bile duct. Its liver can produce bile, which is then transported to the gallbladder, and then the gallbladder transports the bile to the small intestine through the pancreatic duct to digest food.
The location of hepatitis is not simple. The liver, gallbladder, pancreas and small intestine of cats grow in very close and complex locations.
Among these important tissues, the liver is often inflamed along with the surrounding gallbladder, pancreas or small intestine, hence the trias.
In other words, hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver, but it's not just a liver problem. It often involves more than we can imagine.
As we emphasized earlier, cholangiohepatitis in this article is mainly chronic, which means cholangiohepatitis can also be acute, but with a lower incidence. Young male cats are more susceptible to this disease. They may be reluctant to eat immediately, then have poor spirits, accompanied by symptoms such as fever, vomiting or stomach pain (screaming when touched), and then their skin, gums and eyes will turn yellow (jaundice).
It is important to emphasize that acute cholangiohepatitis is rare, and chronic cholangiohepatitis is the most widely affecting one.
Generally, middle-aged cats and even older cats are more susceptible to chronic cholangitis, which can be divided into neutral cholangitis, lymphocytic cholangitis and chronic cholangitis caused by liver flukes.
Because the symptoms of chronic hepatitis are not obvious, it is difficult for people to find out. It is difficult to say whether the sick cat is good or bad, and it is difficult to grasp. Generally speaking, these will damage the cat's liver, and even lead to cirrhosis.
Moreover, this disease is becoming more and more common in modern pets and domestic cats, and shovelers should be vigilant.
Although the symptoms of chronic hepatitis are not obvious, we can infer from some clinical symptoms.
What should we do? Once the cat shows these symptoms, take it to the hospital for a comprehensive physical examination, so that some diseases can be diagnosed and followed up.
What are the possible symptoms of feline chronic hepatitis?
As mentioned earlier, the symptoms of feline chronic hepatitis are almost undetectable. Now we just infer chronic hepatitis through some clinical symptoms, which means that other diseases may also have these symptoms.
Once you find that your cat has these symptoms, the first thing you should do is take it to the hospital for a good check-up, give it more careful care and treatment.
All cats may be picky eaters, but cats with chronic liver disease have weaker intelligence and are more likely to be picky eaters. This is a manifestation of their complete lack of specificity.
To be more specific, it is like this:
1. Neutral cholangiohepatitis
Cats of all ages are susceptible to neutral cholangiohepatitis, mainly occurring in young to middle-aged cats. The typical symptoms are lethargy, fever and jaundice caused by bile stasis and sepsis.
It is worth noting that this disease is generally acute, but the incidence of acute disease is low, or even case reports of chronic disease. Therefore, if taken out alone, these symptoms are still very likely to be chronic cholangiohepatitis.
2. Lymphocytic cholangiohepatitis
Typical lymphocytic cholangiohepatitis mainly occurs in middle-aged cats, and Persian cats are the most common breed. Sick cats often have a history of months to years of disease, with symptoms including weight loss, intermittent anorexia, lethargy and jaundice.
Unlike neutral cholangiohepatitis, lymphocytic cholangiohepatitis rarely causes fever. About 1/3 of sick cats have high-protein ascites, so you need to know the difference between this disease and feline infectious peritonitis.
3. Chronic cholangitis caused by liver flukes
Common symptoms of this disease include lethargy, weight loss, anorexia, abdominal pain and vomiting. Too many liver flukes will cause jaundice.
The manifestations of chronic hepatitis are difficult to detect. It may be that you are just casually picking some food, or it may be that you are in a slightly poor state. You are lazy to move, and you like to sleep in. These are early manifestations.
Some cats have excellent appetites, but their weight remains the same. It may be that chronic hepatitis hinders the absorption of nutrients.
We have also said that chronic liver disease is closely related to the small intestine and pancreas, so before discovering chronic hepatitis, it is possible to be admitted to the hospital due to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) or pancreatitis.
These are the general symptoms of feline chronic liver disease. Still, that said, this disease is almost impossible to detect in the early stages, so it has a lot to do with our daily care and how to prevent cats from developing chronic liver disease through these daily care.
How to prevent feline chronic cholangiohepatitis?
Cats are pure carnivores. Feeding cats natural, fresh, abundant and nutritionally balanced raw and cooked meat is definitely the best preventive method. When making raw and cooked meat, you must do your homework in advance to avoid missing the health and nutrition of your cat.
1. Feed less or no cat food
The prevention of feline fatty liver is the same. Poor diet, such as long-term feeding of single, low-quality cat food, will greatly affect the cat's liver health.
Changing and optimizing your cat's diet is a helpful measure for almost any cat disease.
You need to know that pet food companies can make a lot of profits by selling a lot of dry cat food, using as little as possible of the right meat in the raw materials and adding more starch and substitute plant protein. These carbohydrates are useless to cats, and long-term use can even cause various cat diseases.
"Poor diet can be devastating to a cat's immune and lymphatic systems."
Reduce the frequency of feeding cat food and slowly switch to dry food until the cat receives a balanced proportion of raw and cooked meat. Then, you can use cat food as a snack, once or twice a week, or finally, don't feed it directly.
Pay attention to the gradual change of food. Eating more meat is very beneficial to the health of cats.
2. Reasonable diet
Commercial pet food definitely has its downsides if eaten too much, which is a big possibility factor for cats to develop chronic liver disease.
But in today's pursuit of convenient and quick pet keeping, almost no one will directly refuse to feed cat food. So my suggestion is that cats should eat more wet food, including main food cans and home-cooked food, and wet food should account for at least half. You can click the previous article about home-cooked cooked meat: How to make a nutritionally balanced home-cooked meal?
Wet food has high water content, good quality, rich in protein, and almost zero carbohydrates. It is the best food source for cats.
If you have to feed dry wolf, pay attention to choosing high-quality cat food, using meat as raw materials, high in animal protein, low in carbohydrates, and supplemented with eggs to enhance nutrition.
3. Feed at regular intervals and in fixed amounts, eat less and more often.
What you feed your cat is important, and the frequency and method of feeding should also be noted.
Timing has been emphasized many times. The general calorie requirement for adult cats is about 200 kcal. After conversion, cat food generally needs 60~70g/day, while meat or canned food is 200g/day. Therefore, after knowing the daily intake of your cat, you can divide it into three meals a day: one meal in the morning, one meal at noon, and one meal in the evening. If you still have the energy, try to let your cat eat less and more often.
Studies have shown that cats eat 20 or more times a day.
4. Take good vitamin supplements.
According to existing clinical evidence, it has been found that cats with liver disease need to supplement vitamins in addition to their diet. Cats with cholangiohepatitis have lower intestinal absorption capacity for nutrients, so supplementing vitamins is key to nutritional management.
The early symptom of suspected cat liver is picky eating. Vitamins are incomplete in picky eating. Cats that don't eat or drink well are very likely to be deficient in vitamins. Cats should be supplemented with some vitamins on a daily basis.
Vitamins that can be supplemented include vitamin E, vitamin K, vitamin B12, etc. If possible, taurine, folic acid, and L-carnitine can be used according to standards.
That's it for today. I am a noisy family with ten cats. This article is an original work by Jiemao Jiaozhu. Welcome to like and follow. More dry cats are waiting for you~ ~ ~
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