Young cat with elevated SDMA?

[MontysGal]

Hi there,

I was wondering if anyone could please help me interpret the findings of my cat’s bloodwork.
I have a 2 year old domestic shorthair, indoor only cat in good health/weight who went in for his yearly check up and vaccinations.
His only issue is that about twice a week he throws up, either a hairball or water. Honestly, I never thought much of it, because I’ve always had cats throw up – not fun but has never been a concern.

Vet wanted to run bloodwork to see if the throwing up is from anything obvious. Results came back normal except as follows:
SDMA results: 18 ug/dL Normal reference: 0-14 ug/dL

Creatinine was still within range: 184 umol/L Normal reference: 80-221 umol/L

There’s a note at the bottom saying:
“SDMA is a new test for evaluating kidney function. It increases earlier than creatinine in cats with chronic kidney disease.
If SDMA increases and CREA is within reference interval, early kidney disease is likely. Most animals with early kidney disease have a SDMA between 14-20 ug/dL.
A complete urinalysis should always be preformed to evaluate for inappropriate urine SG, proteinuria and other evidence of kidney disease.”

My question is – how likely is it for a 2 year old cat to experience renal impairment? Is it something that I really should proceed with the urinalysis for?

If it is chronic kidney disease, would the treatment not be to just switch his food at this early stage? I’m much more tempted to swap his food (which won’t hurt him) than drag him back to the vet for a urinalysis. Then next year he can do the full work up for comparison.

Am I turning a blind eye?

[sockmonkey]

in my experience, 2 is very young for early kidney disease. but the SDMA test is very new and it’s possible that our 8 - 9 year old cats with kidney disease had early disease at 2 and we just didn’t know it.

Definitely you want a full urinalysis. That will give you a much better idea if there is anything bad going on. If you are really concerned, I would have them send it out rather than do it in house.

Changing the food to a kidney diet won’t hurt. That’s always the first step for my clients.

[MustangSavvy]

SDMA is a very new test, it is hard to say if we are just catching kidney disease earlier, as the above said. I expect more research will show that we are just catching it earlier.

Do the urinalysis for sure and switching to a KD won’t hurt anything.

[Simkie]

Wow, that’s really interesting. Just out of curiosity, what do you feed? At the very least, I’d want to move to an all-wet diet.

I would do the UA. An infection can affect kidney values, and untreated, cause kidney damage.

[MontysGal]

Thank you all so much for your help. I think I will run the UA and I will let you know what the results are.

Simkie - both cats (brothers from the humane society) are on Nutro Natural Choice Indoor Adult - Chicken & Whole Brown Rice:

http://www.nutro.com/natural-cat-food/nutro/dry/indoor-cat-chicken-brown-rice.aspx

I spoke with my small animal vet yesterday and he did say the same as you, that the SDMA levels may be raised due to an infection or something relatively ‘easy’. Fingers crossed for this!

[Simkie]

You’re going to want to hit up www.catinfo.org, and then change your food. Wet food, no carbs

[SquishTheBunny]

Those results could have easily been from mild dehydration from vomiting
It’s a very new test which should.NOT be used to diagnose kidney disease, just an indicator to further evaluate renal functions (bun, creat, urine sg etc.). We have seen off reference ranges in healthy patients. I would expect reference ranges to be altered as more data is accumulated.