News Briefs for the Week of March 24, 2002
By Marcella Durand for Cat Facts
- A Good Reason to Stop Vacuuming
Sometimes you've been doing something because you thought it was supposed to be good for you, but then you find out that it's wasn't so good after all. Well, it looks like vacuuming to get rid of allergenic cat hair and dander is sort of like that.
Researchers at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester, England, were able to use a device called an Intra Nasal Air Sampler to test how much cat allergen was breathed in by residents of the hospital after vacuuming with a variety of vacuum cleaners, including HEPA-filter, cyclone, and a prototype water-reservoir vacuum cleaner. Unfortunately, it looks like all the vacuum cleaners-even the fancy ones-were just good at spreading the cat allergen around. In fact, the researchers found that the vacuuming actually led to a three- to five-fold increase in cat allergen exposure, no matter which vacuum cleaner was used.
"The bottom line is, if you have a cat and a cat allergy, and you really want to avoid exposure to the cat allergen, vacuuming or a new vacuum cleaner is not going to do it, no matter how expensive the vacuum is," says Robin Gore, MD, one of the researchers conducting the study.
- Older Cats May be at Risk for Glaucoma
It's been well-established that older humans and dogs are at a higher risk for glaucoma. Now scientists think old kitties may be at risk, too. When researchers from the University of Wisconsin evaluated whether a glaucoma test would be a valuable addition to routine feline geriatric screening, they were surprised by the results from the veterinary clinics participating in the study. "Basically, we found that 1.5 percent of cats over the age of seven had some abnormality in the pressure within their eye. In most of those cats, it was abnormally high," says Paul E. Miller, DVM, one of the researchers with the study. Miller adds that six of the cats out of 538 studied had a "slow and insidious form of glaucoma" called aqueous humor misdirection, which makes "their vision really screwed up."
While 1.5 percent may not sound like much, Miller believes future studies will show a higher frequency. "No one has asked owners whether their cats have any visual impairment. As we're getting better clinicians, we're going to find that the frequency goes up," he says.
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