What goes meow AND achoo?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying allergic cat owners! Oy!
Ebenezer Satyaraj and team at Nestle Purina looked into it and discovered…it’s about the spit! Just one pesky protein in cat saliva is usually the culprit in most human allergic reactions. Cats spread the protein around when they groom themselves.
To make cats hypo-allergenic from the INSIDE out, researchers gave cats food with an antibody to reduce the allergy causing protein. Each week, they measured the sneeze potential of the cats’ fur.
Results? Purr-fect! The allergen was reduced by almost half by the tenth week! The most allergenic cats saw the biggest improvement.
Now, cats and their people can coexist in peace! That research’s nothing to sneeze at… Hello, Kitty!
Reference: Satyaraj, E., Gardner, C., Filipi, I., Cramer, K., & Sherrill, S. (2019). Reduction of active Fel d1 from cats using an antiFel d1 egg IgY antibody. Immunity, inflammation and disease, 7(2), 68–73. https://doi.org/10.1002/iid3.244