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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Pain Res.
Sec. Veterinary and Comparative Pain
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpain.2025.1501932

Proteomic profiling of serum in cats with naturally occurring degenerative joint disease and comorbid conditions

Provisionally accepted
B. Duncan X. Lascelles B. Duncan X. Lascelles 1*Rakesh Ponnala Rakesh Ponnala 2Steve G Kammerling Steve G Kammerling 2Tracey Williams Tracey Williams 2
  • 1 North Carolina State University, Raleigh, United States
  • 2 Zoetis Veterinary Medicine Research & Development, Kalamozoo, MI, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Degenerative joint disease (DJD) occurs very commonly in cats and can be associated with pain. Almost 70% of cats with DJD-associated pain suffer the co-morbidity of chronic kidney disease (CKD). There are currently very limited treatment or management options. A greater understanding of the systems biology of DJD, DJD-associated pain, and CKD may contribute to identifying disease specific biomarkers and relevant targets for the development of therapeutics for the control of these conditions in cats, and help inform human pain therapeutic development. Using mass spectrometry-based proteomic profiling of the serum of 200 highly phenotyped cats with varying burdens of DJD, pain, and CKD, we identified significant individual proteins and pathways. Functional pathway analysis, based on differentially abundant proteins across individual disease states (DJD, pain, CKD), identified pathways playing a role in DJD and DJD-associated pain including acute phase response signaling, LXR/RXR and FXR/RXR activation and the complement system. With the added co-morbidity of CKD, similar pathways were identified, with the addition of IL-12 signaling and production in macrophages.

    Keywords: feline, Degenerative joint disease (DJD), Osteoarthristis, Chronic Kidney Disease, Pain

    Received: 25 Sep 2024; Accepted: 16 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Lascelles, Ponnala, Kammerling and Williams. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: B. Duncan X. Lascelles, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.