Nutritional management of gastrointestinal (GI) diseases in cats

There are wide-ranging causes for vomiting and/or diarrhoea in cats that include both functional and structural changes to the GI tract. Some common causes of acute and chronic gastroenteritis include:

Non-specific gastritis Ingestion of spoiled foods Dietary indiscretion Dietary hypersensitivity Infectious agents Intussusception Neoplasia

Inflammatory bowel disease Exocrine pancreatic insufficiency GI foreign bodies Motility disorders Systemic disease

• Clinical studies have suggested that 35-50% or more of cases of chronic diarrhoea in cats may be diet-responsive^1,2.
• A proportion of these cases may have genuine dietary hypersensitivity while many simply respond to appropriate dietary management.
• Similarly, many cases of acute non-specific diarrhoea will also respond to appropriate dietary management.

Management with an appropriate dietary change has huge potential for clinical benefit. Intervention with an optimally designed diet may:

• Prevent or limit exposure to dietary antigens and prevent or minimise adverse immunological reactions.
• Limit exposure to ingredients that cause dietary sensitivity or intolerance (non-immunologically mediated adverse reactions).
• Provide highly digestible nutrients with a low residue, to minimise complications associated with undigested food (e.g., osmotic diarrhoea, altered microflora).
• Further promote a healthy intestinal microflora by providing specific substrates to promote the growth of beneficial bacteria.
• Provide an appropriate level of fibre to help maintain normal GI motility.
• Provide nutritional support for the GI mucosa.
• Meet the specific nutritional requirements of cats; and address the demands of GI disease, such as electrolyte loss, GI inflammation and weight loss caused by malassimilation.

Traditional diets designed to manage GI disease have been based on feeding a low fat and relatively high carbohydrate food; however cats are naturally adapted to a low carbohydrate diet and are able to digest and utilise high levels of dietary fat. Recent studies have confirmed that fat restriction may not be beneficial in cats with gastroenteritis:

A highly digestible diet with moderately high fat levels presents numerous clinical advantages^3,4:

• It is better adapted to the unique feline digestive physiology.
• It better meets the nutritional needs of a cat with debilitating GI disease.

Although pancreatitis is increasingly recognised as a clinical entity in cats, the optimal diet to manage this disease in cats is unknown. Clinical improvement has been documented with or without fat restriction, and low fat diets may have no specific benefits in cats.

Feline EN provides proven efficacy in the management of feline diarrhoea with:

• Outstanding digestibility for optimum nutritional support of the compromised GI tract.
• Minimal food residues that may promote GI inflammation and undesirable bacterial growth.
• Medium fat levels and highly digestible fat to help meet the specific needs of the cat.
• Limited and highly digestible protein sources to restrict the exposure to dietary antigens in the GI tract.
• Inulin – a true pre-biotic.
  - Helps maintain a healthy balance of microflora in the intestinal tract.
  - Excellent source of short chain fatty acids that promote a healthy colonic mucosa.
• Optimum levels of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids to help modify inflammatory responses.
• Bentonite (hydrated aluminium silicate) absorbs toxins and pathogens and improves the clinical signs of diarrhoea.