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Because you watch SciShow,  Brilliant is offering you a 30-day free trial and 20% off an annual premium subscription at Brilliant.org/SciShow. There’s a viral story that’s gone  around claiming that researchers have found a way to double  the lifespan of domestic cats by curing one of their most common diseases.

As you might imagine, cat lovers  like myself went wild for the idea that we might be able to spend  twice as much time with our beloved kitties like my  Gummybear and Chester Cheese. Now a good rule of thumb is, if it sounds too good to be true, it’s at least  worth taking a closer look at what the research is really telling us. So let's dive a bit deeper into what we know about the cause of feline chronic kidney disease, what this knowledge means for  extending Fluffy’s golden years, and how it might help humans stay healthy too. [♪ INTRO] Ask any person whose been a cat person for a while and they’ve probably cared for a senior kitty with chronic kidney disease, or CKD.

Normally, kidneys remove certain  waste products from the body, and convert other waste into forms  that are easier to get rid of. When this slows down or stops,  you get a very ill kitty cat. We’re talking loss of appetite,  high blood pressure, lethargy, and generally not absorbing  important nutrients from food.

All around, not good stuff! Strangely, our feline friends  are dramatically more susceptible to CKD than other animals, like  dogs – or humans, for that matter. But the why has remained a big question.

It’s estimated that around 10% of all cats over the age of 10 have CKD, though one study puts it way high higher, around  50% among cats in general. Which is pretty bad. Currently, the best we can do is  feed cats with CKD a specialized diet that helps minimize the effects  and prolong their lives a bit.

Even though it’s a well known  issue, it’s still poorly understood, and currently there’s no cure. But hopefully that’s not the case for much longer. A paper published in 2016 made  an important breakthrough in understanding why cats are  so prone to kidney disease.

A protein called apoptosis  inhibitor of macrophage, or AIM, is notably inactive in cats  suffering from kidney disease. When functioning properly, this protein helps flag and wipe out dead cells  and other unwanted buildup. It marks them in order for the body’s macrophages, a specific type of white  blood cell, to clean house.

So when AIM isn’t doing its job,  those cellular bits build up and stick around, causing  problems for the kidneys. And AIM in cats seems to  generally struggle to do its job. In the study, mice were  genetically modified to produce a kitty version of AIM, instead of their own.

In experiments, those mice experienced  kidney failure shockingly fast. However, if the researchers then  injected these mice with a modified version of their own mousey AIM  protein, they made a remarkable recovery, with mortality rates  dropping from 100% down to 20%. While there were still a lot of questions about why exactly feline AIM was  defective, it definitely seems like cats have a genetically  nonfunctional version of AIM.

Since this discovery, researchers  have been working on developing a treatment containing  better-functioning AIM to ease, or maybe even fully prevent,  chronic kidney disease in cats. Since they showed that a dose  of working AIM can help mice with the nonfunctional kind,  they figure it makes perfect sense to do the same thing for cats. It’s helped that thousands of cat  lovers actually crowdfunded clinical trials of their research to  keep momentum going after the work was initially halted  during the COVID-19 pandemic.

And that enthusiasm didn’t go unnoticed. Pharmaceutical companies began  to show interest in the work too, and the team is working with  one of them to make it happen. Whether all this will double a cat’s  lifespan, however, remains unclear.

That claim traces directly to Dr. Toru Miyazaki, the lead investigator behind all this research. And he definitely seems to  know what he’s talking about.

However, the most recent results  of the AIM drug development project were presented at a conference in 2023, and SciShow was not in attendance. Our invitation must have gotten lost in the mail. So I don’t have numbers in front of me to tell you how realistic that claim really is.

But according to online interviews,  they wrapped up a pilot study of their drug in 10 cats in 2023, with  the goal of expanding clinical trials in 2024 and having something ready to go in 2026. So I can tell you that a drug  for feline chronic kidney disease seems to be happening, and that is great news regardless of the exact numbers. But you don’t have to be a cat lover  to get excited about this research, because it may one day help combat  dangerous human diseases too.

Through our discoveries of the  kidney-AIM relationship in cats, we can also start to understand its function in renal disease in humans, and  find effective treatments. Renal is like kidney stuff. Dr.

Miyazaki’s lab pumps out  papers at a prolific rate, and their findings also point  at possible AIM functions in rheumatoid arthritis and lung-related  diseases, among many others. So while the claims of  doubling your cat's lifespan are hard to substantiate, very few  cats have had this drug at all, let alone for twenty years, which  would be how long they’d have to take it for a cat’s life span to double,  the science is definitely looking very positive overall for  kidney cures on the horizon. Chronic kidney disease is  not the only health concern that afflicts senior cats,  but it might be the biggest.

It’s definitely reasonable to  suppose that a drug to treat it would result in a bump in average longevity. So while the viral appeal  of this story is obvious, and while it’s a lesson in not  believing everything you read on the Internet, it’s also not total BS! Cat lovers, you have my permission to be excited.

My favorite thing about cats is  the feeling of their whole body vibrating in pure bliss when they purr. And there’s science behind  harmonious vibrations like that. Or at least there’s science  behind harmonious vibrations in the universe, whether or not  we’re talking about the ones emanating from cats.

And you can  learn all about those good vibes with Brilliant: an interactive  online learning platform with thousands of lessons in science,  computer science, and math. In their course, Electricity and Waves Puzzles, they have an entire puzzle  devoted to Harmonious Vibrations! The awesome thing about  Brilliant is that they keep their courses engaging and interactive.

And one way they do that is with tons of puzzles. This course has 56 puzzles that make learning about electricity and waves fun. All you have to do to get started  is go to Brilliant.org/SciShow or click the link in the description down below.

That link also gives you 20%  off an annual premium Brilliant subscription. And you’ll get  your first 30 days for free! Thanks for watching this SciShow video and thanks to Brilliant for supporting it! [♪ OUTRO]