Background: There are no validated systems for measuring pain from osteoarthritis in cats. Hypothesis: Owner subjective assessments and an activity monitor (AM) can be used to detect pain in cats with osteoarthritis and to assess efficacy of treatments.Animals: Thirteen cats older than 10 years old, with owner-assessed decreases in activity, painful arthritic joints, and clinically normal blood work were included and evaluated for 3 weeks.Methods: A collar-mounted AM measured activity and a client-specific outcome measure (CSOM) questionnaire characterized the severity of impairment. Overall global quality of life was also evaluated for each treatment. In weeks 2 and 3, meloxicam (0.1 mg/kg, day 1; 0.05 mg/kg, days 2-5) or a placebo was administered in a blinded, randomized, cross-over manner to test the assessment systems.Results: The cats had a median of 4 arthritic appendicular joints. Activity counts for the week when cats (complete data on activity; n 5 9) were administered meloxicam were significantly higher than at baseline (P 5 .02) but not after placebo (P 5 .06). Baseline activity counts were not significantly different from placebo (P 5 .6). The CSOM data (n 5 13) showed that owners considered their cats to be more active on meloxicam compared with baseline (P 5 .001) and placebo (P , .004), and more active on placebo than at baseline (P , .01). Global quality of life improved significantly with meloxicam (P , .042).Conclusions and Clinical Importance: Both an AM and a CSOM system can detect behavior associated with pain relief in cats that are arthritic. Objective activity data might allow subjective assessment systems to be validated for use in clinical studies.

Background: Feline degenerative joint disease (DJD) is common and there are no approved therapies for the alleviation of the associated pain.Objective: To test a diet high in eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) content and supplemented with green-lipped mussel extract and glucosamine/chondroitin sulfate (test-diet) for its pain-relieving and activity-enhancing effects in cats with painful, mobility-impairing DJD over a 9-week period.Animals: Forty client-owned cats. Methods: Randomized, controlled, blinded, parallel group, prospective clinical study. Cats with no detectable systemic disease, and with at least 1 appendicular joint with radiographic evidence of DJD where manipulation elicited an aversive response were included. Cats were randomly allocated to the test-diet or control diet (C-diet). Outcome measures were subjective owner and veterinarian assessments, and objective activity monitoring (accelerometry). Nonparametric statistics were used to evaluate changes within and between groups for both subjective and objective data, and locally weighted scatterplot smoothing regression analysis was used to predict activity changes.Results: The primary objective outcome measures indicated that activity declined significantly (P o .001) in the C-diet group, significantly increased (P o .001) in the test-diet group and there was a significant difference between the groups (P o .001).Conclusion and Clinical Importance: A diet high in EPA and DHA and supplemented with green-lipped mussel extract and glucosamine/chondroitin sulfate improved objective measures of mobility. Dietary modulation might be 1 method to use to improve mobility in cats with DJD-associated pain.

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Background: Progress in establishing if therapies provide relief to cats with degenerative joint disease (DJD)-associated pain is hampered by a lack of validated owner-administered assessment methods.Hypothesis: That an appropriately developed subjective owner-completed instrument (Feline Musculoskeletal Pain Index-FMPI) to assess DJD-associated impairment would have responsiveness and criterion validity.Animals: Twenty-five client-owned cats with DJD-associated pain. Methods: FMPI responsiveness (ability to detect the effect of an analgesic treatment) and validity (correlation with an objective measure) were explored through a stratified, randomized, double blinded, placebo-controlled, crossover 10-week clinical study. Meloxicam was administered to effect pain relief. A linear mixed model, backward stepwise regression, and Pearson correlations were used to assess responsiveness and criterion validity with the assumption that the NSAID would increase activity.Results: Positive responses of cats to placebo (P = .0001) and meloxicam treatment (P = .0004) were detected; however, the instrument did not detect any difference between placebo and meloxicam (linear mixed model), even for the high impairment cases. Percent meloxicam target dose administered, temperament, and total baseline FMPI score were covariates that most affected FMPI scores. Controlling for significant covariates, most positive effects were seen for placebo treatment. Positive treatment effects on activity were detected, but only for the cases designated as most highly impaired.Conclusions and Clinical Importance: Neither responsiveness nor criterion validity were detected by the inclusion criteria for cases in this study. The data suggest that further work is indicated to understand factors affecting activity in cats to optimize inclusion criteria.

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