Evangelia Maniaki: Do owner-reported changes in mobility reflect measures of activity, pain and degenerative joint disease in cats?

1 The prevalence of DJD is strongly associated with age and is estimated to occur in 61–99% of cats of all ages according to radiographical studies.2,3 Clinical signs associated with DJD are difficult to identify, as domestic cats tend to hide signs of pain and disease,4 and owners may consider DJD-related behavioural changes5 a part of the natural ageing process.

6 The diagnosis of feline DJD is further hindered by the difficulty of assessing pain in cats and the lack of agreement between orthopaedic examinations and radiographical findings.7–10 Consequently, feline DJD may not be recognised in a significant number of cats, and untreated chronic pain is a welfare concern.

The Feline Musculoskeletal Pain Index (FMPI) is an owner-completed questionnaire used for the clinical assessment of DJD-associated chronic pain in cats which has proven validity and reliability.11–15 VetMetrica is an owner-completed questionnaire used for the assessment of the quality of life (QoL) in cats which has been shown to have good discriminatory validity and reliability in cats with or without comorbidities.16 Actical is an activity monitor (accelerometer) that has been used in a plethora of studies investigating activity levels and different therapeutic interventions in cats with DJD.13,15,17–20 

This device has been used to successfully differentiate healthy cats from cats with DJD and may also have the potential to objectively detect early signs of DJD in cats where the diagnosis has not yet been established.

Being able to recognise DJD-related signs earlier would allow interventions aimed at slowing DJD progression, thereby improving the QoL of cats with DJD. The aim of the present study was to determine whether owner-reported mobility changes were indicative of early DJD-related changes as evaluated by the FMPI and orthopaedic examination. A further aim was to investigate the effect of early DJD on the QoL of affected cats. We hypothesised that early DJD-related changes in owner-reported mobility would reflect joint health as evaluated by the FMPI and orthopaedic examination, and that early DJD-related pain would have a significant impact on the QoL of affected cats.

Materials and methods

This blinded, nested case-control study was approved by the University of Bristol’s Health Sciences Faculty Research Ethics Committee (69041; 4 July 2018) and the Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body (VIN/18/026; 9 August 2018). Owners were recruited from the Bristol Cats (BC) study and the general public between August 2018 and October 2019. Briefly, the BC study is an ongoing longitudinal study of the health, behaviour and environment of client-owned cats, where data are being collected prospectively from owners and veterinary surgeons via the use of questionnaires and the sharing of clinical records, respectively.

21 Owners of eligible BC study cats were contacted directly via phone, post or email. Owners of non-BC study cats were recruited via study advertisements (University of Bristol campus, local veterinary practices) and social media. The inclusion criteria are shown in Table 1.

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