Retrospective Case Control Study of Pet Ferrets with Cystine Urolithiasis in Quebec, Canada: Epidemiological and Clinical Features
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: To describe epidemiological and clinical features of cystine urolithiasis in pet ferrets. Methods: Retrospective case control study on medical records from four private clinics and one teaching hospital for pet ferrets diagnosed with cystine urolithiasis confirmed by spectrophotometry presented between July 2014 and July 2019 in Quebec, Canada; these cases were then compared to a reference population of 210 ferrets (controls) presented at the same facilities over the same timeframe. Results: Among the 36 identified cases, most affected ferrets were neutered males (32/36, 89%) and the mean age at presentation was 1.8 (± 1.0 standard deviation) year. Grain-free diets of six different brands were offered for at least three weeks prior to the presentation to 34/36 (94%) of the included cases. The ferrets that developed cystine urolithiasis were 57.9 times (Odds ratio [OR], 95% Confidence interval [95% CI]: 11.0, 304.8) more likely to receive a grain-free diet compared to the reference population. No significant difference in the values for the energy, protein, cysteine, and methionine contents were detected between the grainfree and the cereal-based diets offered to these pet ferrets. Among ferrets with uroliths, those with urethral calculi were 4.7 times (OR, 95% CI: 2.1, 10.4) more likely to develop an acute urinary tract obstruction. Conclusion: Although a definitive causation could not be drawn solely from these clinical cases, this case control study highlights a possible nutritional aetiology in the complex pathogenesis of cystine urolithiasis in ferrets.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".