Urine test for rapid diagnosis of pregnancy in cats
Although both serum and urinary relaxin levels can be used to diagnose and
monitor pregnancy in cats, only serum levels are generally measured in practice. The use of serum or plasma for testing requires veterinary intervention, which
can prove to be expensive for the cat owner. In a paper published in the journal
Reproduction
in Domestic Animals, Florine de Haas van Dorsser and colleagues carried
out a study to assess the use of urine for the rapid diagnosis of pregnancy at
an early stage in domestic cats using a bench-top kit to detect relaxin.
While the use of neat urine samples from pregnant cats tested negative 28
days after mating, the use of urine diluted in non-pregnant cat serum tested positive for relaxin. The limit of detection of relaxin in serum using the kit was approximately 1.5 ng/ml, while that for urine was 10.0 ng/ml. The sensitivity of the bench-top kit was much lower with urine than with serum. The results obtained suggest that the bench-top Witness Relaxin kit (Synbiotics Corporation) can be used to detect pregnancy in cats 28 days after mating using diluted urine. The authors hope that, with further research, a home pregnancy test for cats may be developed.
Pregnancy diagnosis in cats using a rapid, bench-top kit to detect relaxin in urine by FJ
de Haas van Dorsser, S. Lasano and BG Steinetz appears in Reproduction in Domestic Animals, Vol. 42, pp. 111-112 (2007).