Assessing chronic stress in cats: measuring hair cortisol using an ELISA

Area of Science:

• Veterinary Medicine
• Animal Welfare Science
• Endocrinology

Background:

• Assessing feline stress is crucial for improving welfare in institutional settings.
• Current methods like behavioral observation and systemic cortisol measurements have limitations for chronic stress evaluation.
• Hair analysis offers a potential noninvasive method for long-term stress monitoring in cats.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the feasibility of using hair cortisol concentrations as a noninvasive biomarker for chronic stress in cats.
• To compare hair cortisol levels between cats in a shelter environment and institutionally owned cats.

Main Methods:

• Hair samples were collected from 29 cats (shelter and university-owned populations).
• Cortisol was extracted from hair using a modified bovine hair extraction method.
• Hair cortisol concentrations were measured using a commercial ELISA kit validated for human saliva.

Main Results:

• Mean hair cortisol concentration was 140 pg/mg for shelter cats and 98 pg/mg for university-owned cats.
• No significant difference in hair cortisol concentrations was found between the two cat populations (p = 0.793).
• The ELISA assay demonstrated acceptable intra-assay (9.3%) and inter-assay (8.4%) variability, with good spiking recovery (87.7%) and parallelism (99.7%).

Conclusions:

• Hair cortisol measurement is a promising noninvasive technique for monitoring chronic stress in cats.
• This method can be valuable for assessing feline welfare and acclimation in prolonged confinement situations.
• Further research can validate hair cortisol as a routine welfare assessment tool for cats in various environments.