Royal Dick launches testing service for intestinal inflammation

Clinicians at the University of Edinburgh’s Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies have launched Scotland’s first testing service for cats and dogs with an intestinal inflammation.

The test aims to support vets when diagnosing and monitoring chronic inflammatory enteropathy (CIE) in their feline and canine patients by measuring levels of faecal calprotectin (fCAL), considered the most reliable biomarker for inflammation in a patient’s intestines.

Dogs and cats with chronic diarrhoea have significantly higher fCAL levels than healthy controls. As in humans with irritable bowel disease, fCAL increases in animals with CIE and decreases after treatment. The biomarker also correlates with clinical severity against the canine chronic enteropathy clinical activity index, or CCECAI, and with severity on histopathology.

Collaboration

The test, the first of its type available in Scotland, was developed and validated by clinical pathologists at the university and specialists in internal medicine at the Royal Dick’s hospital for small animals.

Results will be available in less than a week and supplied with interpretation notes.

For more information and to submit a sample, visit the pathology section on the university website.