Managing feline health often requires specialized nutrition, especially when dealing with conditions like hepatic disease or gastrointestinal issues. Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets offer formulations designed to address these specific needs. This article delves into the Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets HP Hepatic Feline formula, exploring its ingredients, benefits, and how it works to support your cat's health.
Understanding the Need for Specialized Diets
Adverse food reactions (AFRs) in cats can manifest as either gastrointestinal (GI) issues like inappetence, vomiting, bloating, and diarrhea, or cutaneous signs such as pruritus, erythema, and altered hair growth. Managing these conditions often involves a strict elimination diet trial using appropriate diets. Such diets typically fall into three broad categories: veterinary therapeutic hydrolyzed protein diets, veterinary therapeutic limited-ingredient diets, and complete and balanced home-cooked diets. Hydrolyzed protein diets, like Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets, play a crucial role in managing these AFRs.
What is Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets HP Hepatic Feline?
Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets HP Hepatic Feline is a specialized diet formulated to support cats with liver conditions. It's designed to be highly digestible, promoting nutrient absorption while addressing the unique nutritional needs of cats with hepatic issues.
Key Benefits of Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets HP Hepatic Feline
- Supports Liver Health: The diet is formulated to meet the specific nutritional requirements of cats with liver disease.
- High Digestibility: Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets EN Gastroenteric Feline Formulas offer high total digestibility to promote nutrient absorption.
- Energy-Dense: Provides essential nutrition in smaller meals, which can be beneficial for cats with reduced appetites or digestive issues.
- Urinary Health Support: This diet promotes a urinary environment unfavorable to the development of both struvite and calcium oxalate crystals.
- High Protein: Essential for maintaining muscle mass and overall health.
- Antioxidant-Rich: Contains antioxidants to help protect cells from damage.
- Great Taste: Palatability is crucial to ensure cats consume the diet willingly.
The Science Behind Hydrolyzed Protein Diets
Traditional cat food contains intact proteins. The aim of a hydrolyzed protein diet for cats-which requires a veterinary prescription-is to disrupt or break down the proteins within the diet, so the immune system does not react to them. The main goal of hydrolyzing a protein is to break it down to a size that removes existing allergens, thereby avoiding recognition by patients sensitized to the intact protein. Hydrolysis is a reasonably reliable way to reduce antigenicity of a protein molecule by using proteolytic enzymes to cleave peptide bonds. In a hydrolyzed protein diet, all intact proteins and larger polypeptides are ideally processed into small peptides, typically < 13 kDa (low-molecular-weight proteins).
However, even these diets may retain allergens that cause AFRs in some individuals, at which point a trial using a different diet, often with a different protein source, is recommended. In selecting an elimination trial diet, carbohydrate sources should also be considered. The most commonly reported sources of food allergies in dogs and cats include animal proteins and some carbohydrates.
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Ingredients to Consider
When selecting a hydrolyzed diet, it's essential to consider both protein and carbohydrate sources. Some hydrolyzed formulas include plant proteins, but these proteins should still be hydrolyzed to limit antigenicity.
Alternatives to Hydrolyzed Protein Diets
In an effort to further minimize antigenicity, some diets provide protein in the form of individual amino acids rather than the small polypeptides in hydrolyzed diets (oligomeric) or intact proteins (polymeric) in other diets. The advent of these elemental (monomeric) diets in veterinary medicine stems from elemental diet use in human medicine.
However, elemental diets have been associated with palatability issues in both human and veterinary patients. While human liquid elemental diets may be used in veterinary patients in short-term clinical settings, they are not complete and balanced for dogs and cats, and significant essential nutrient deficiencies could lead to poor and potentially fatal outcomes even with short-term use, depending on the human formulation.
How Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets EN Gastroenteric Feline Formula Works
Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets EN Gastroenteric Feline Formulas offer high total digestibility to promote nutrient absorption. The diet is energy-dense to provide essential nutrition in smaller meals and helps support the unique nutritional needs of cats with GI conditions. This diet promotes a urinary environment unfavorable to the development of both struvite and calcium oxalate crystals, and also features high protein and antioxidant-rich nutrition.
Clinical Strategies for Selecting Diets
Diet history can help guide hydrolyzed protein choice, as many clinicians prefer to choose proteins that are both novel and hydrolyzed (if possible) for elimination diet trials and long-term management. Clients should expect diet trials for patients with cutaneous AFRs to run at least 4 weeks and up to 8 to 12 weeks. These patients typically take longer to respond even when the ideal trial diet is selected; thus, clients should be counseled to be consistent and follow through to at least 4 weeks.
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Hydrolyzed or elemental diets with low total dietary fiber (TDF) content (8 to 20 g/1000 kcal) make good first-line trial options for patients with small bowel GI AFRs. If a diet history is available, a hydrolyzed formula of a protein known to be novel or tolerated should be considered. Hydrolyzed diets with high TDF content (> 25 g/1000 kcal) are good first-line trial options for patients with large bowel GI AFRs.
For patients with pancreatitis, hyperlipidemia, or lymphangiectasia, formulas that are lower in fat compared with current diet/intake should be used. The best low-fat diet options have fat contents < 35 g/1000 kcal for cats and < 25 g/1000 kcal for dogs (although cats are less susceptible to fat content than dogs). Lower-fat hydrolyzed formulas are available in dry and canned formats.
For patients with a history of struvite or calcium oxalate urolithiasis, formulas designed to reduce risk of stone recurrence should be considered. Patients with liver disease with hepatic encephalopathy (HE) or urate stones may benefit from plant-based recipes (e.g., hydrolyzed soy protein isolate) as well as those that are lower in protein (or purine, if indicated). Diets containing < 50 g protein/1000 kcal for dogs and < 70 g protein/1000 kcal for cats can be used as first-line options.
Feeding Guidelines and Considerations
It's essential to follow your veterinarian's specific feeding guidelines when introducing Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets HP Hepatic Feline to your cat. Gradual transition to the new diet is recommended to avoid digestive upset.
How Long Does It Take to See Results?
How long it takes for a hydrolyzed protein cat food to work depends on if the cat has skin issues or gastrointestinal issues. Most veterinarians recommend feeding a hydrolyzed protein for eight to 12 weeks as part of an elimination diet trial. Digestive issues like diarrhea may improve after a few weeks of eating the hydrolyzed food, but skin issues could take 10-12 weeks to improve.
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