Premium
Pottenger's cats revisited: a classic example of a nutritional deficiency of taurine (820.4)
Author(s) -
Davidson Robert,
Emlet Jonathan
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.28.1_supplement.820.4
Subject(s) - taurine , cats , kitten , medicine , endocrinology , food science , biology , physiology , biochemistry , amino acid
Objective. From 1932 to 1942, Dr. Francis Marion Pottenger Jr. conducted a group of experiments to determine the effects of heat‐processed food on cats. Cats fed an all‐raw diet were healthy while cats fed the cooked meat diet developed various health problems. At the time of Pottenger's studies the heat labile amino acid taurine had not yet been identified as essential for cats. This work shows that the deficiencies Pottenger identified in cats correspond with those of a taurine deficiency and are the direct result of the lack of taurine in the feline diet. Methods. Pub Med and EBSCO Host were utilized to obtain journal articles. The Pottenger papers were obtained from the Price‐Pottenger Nutritional Foundation. The physiological effects of a cooked diet described by Pottenger in his papers were compared with data from recent studies on taurine deficiency in the feline diet. Results. Pottenger’s main observations of near and far sightedness, cardiac leasions, increased stillbirth, low birthweight, poor kitten survival, and developmental abnormalities each correspond to published descriptions of taurine deficiency in cats with multiple references for each described condition. Conclusions. Taurine deficiency is a strong explanation for the symptoms observed by Pottenger in his cat studies. Pottenger’s own conclusion that there was an ‘as yet unidentified, heat‐labile protein factor’ is realized in taurine.