Lamon Tennille K, Lidbury Jonathan, Guadiano Phillip, Colombo Eduardo, Budke Christine
Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
Gastrointestinal Laboratory, Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
J Vet Diagn Invest. 2025 Mar;37(2):217-222. doi: 10.1177/10406387241309391. Epub 2024 Dec 26.
Evaluating stress in shelter and institutionally owned cats is important to help guide improvements in their welfare. Welfare assessments often focus on behavior metrics and physiologic measurements, such as systemic cortisol levels. The gold standard for measuring acute stress is serum cortisol; measuring cortisol in feces and urine gives reliable time-integrated assessments of acute stress. Monitoring chronic stress requires using a matrix that accumulates cortisol over time, such as hair or nails. Hair was collected from 29 cats representing 2 populations: cats from a local shelter and cats owned by a university. Cortisol was extracted from the hair using a method established for extracting cortisol from bovine hair. We measured hair cortisol concentrations with a commercial ELISA that is marketed for human saliva. The mean cortisol concentration was 140 pg/mg for the shelter cats and 98 pg/mg for the university-owned cats. We found no significant difference in hair cortisol concentrations between the 2 groups ( = 0.793). The intra- and inter-assay CVs for the ELISA were 9.3% and 8.4%, respectively. Observed:expected ratios for spiking recovery and dilutional parallelism were 87.7 ± 25.8% and 99.7 ± 37.5%, respectively. Measurement of cortisol in hair samples may provide a noninvasive method to monitor chronic stress and acclimation in cats that live in confinement for prolonged periods.
评估收容所和机构饲养猫的应激情况对于指导改善它们的福利很重要。福利评估通常侧重于行为指标和生理测量，如全身皮质醇水平。测量急性应激的金标准是血清皮质醇；测量粪便和尿液中的皮质醇可对急性应激进行可靠的时间积分评估。监测慢性应激需要使用一种能随时间累积皮质醇的基质，如毛发或指甲。从代表两个群体的29只猫身上采集了毛发：来自当地收容所的猫和一所大学饲养的猫。使用一种从牛毛中提取皮质醇的既定方法从毛发中提取皮质醇。我们用一种用于人类唾液检测的商用酶联免疫吸附测定法（ELISA）测量毛发皮质醇浓度。收容所猫的平均皮质醇浓度为140 pg/mg，大学饲养猫的平均皮质醇浓度为98 pg/mg。我们发现两组之间的毛发皮质醇浓度没有显著差异（P = 0.793）。ELISA的批内和批间变异系数分别为9.3%和8.4%。加标回收率和稀释平行性的实测：预期比值分别为87.7±25.8%和99.7±37.5%。测量毛发样本中的皮质醇可能为监测长期圈养的猫的慢性应激和适应性提供一种非侵入性方法。
