Age‐Dependent Increase in Small Intestinal Permeability and Sex‐Dependent Absorptive Capacity in Cats ( <i>Felis catus</i> )
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Age-associated changes in intestinal permeability and function have not been studied in domestic cats, leaving a key factor in the relationship between age and digestive health in cats unexplored. Due to factors not currently understood, mature and senior cats may experience a loss of fat and protein digestibility, along with a loss of body weight (BW), impacting lifespan and quality of life. Therefore, to establish the relationship between age and intestinal health, intestinal permeability and absorptive capacity were quantified in young and senior cats using a differential sugar absorption test (SAT) on cat plasma. A solution containing four different sized sugars was orally administered to 36 healthy mixed-breed domestic shorthair cats (male (n = 21) and female (n = 15)) split into two groups by age, young 2.40 ± 0.758 (n = 21) and senior 11.23 ± 1.896 (n = 15) years (mean ± SD). Blood was collected before and again 3 h after dosage and plasma was analysed using liquid chromatography mass-spectrometry (LC-MS). Intestinal permeability was higher (p = 0.004) in senior cats than young cats, and was not affected by sex (p = 0.288), sampling date (p = 0.652), or BW (p = 0.951). Absorptive capacity was higher (p = 0.033) in male cats than females, and was not affected by age class (p = 0.440), sampling date (p = 0.580), or BW (p = 0.652). In conclusion, intestinal permeability was higher in older cats and suggests age-related changes in intestinal barrier structure and function. These findings highlight the need to further consider increased intestinal permeability as a cause of reduced nutrient digestibility in older cats, offering a new target for interventions to enhance their health and well-being.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".