Approaching patient wellness with therapeutic nutrition

In this interview with dvm360, Flavia Vaduva, MS, DVM, MBA, DACVIM (Nutrition), and Morgan Key, BS, discuss how clinical research and therapeutic nutrition support pets with chronic conditions—specifically renal disease and dermatologic issues. Vaduva and Key share insights from the Hill’s Pet Nutrition Center and discuss how new therapeutic diets are being developed to improve patient outcomes.

Below is a partial transcript, edited for clarity and flow.

dvm360: In your opinions, what was the most surprising finding from the Hill’s Pet Nutrition Center research that will be shared in your lecture?

Flavia Vaduva, MS, DVM, MBA, DACVIM (Nutrition): Yeah, so my take on at least the renal research, and I'll let Morgan speak to the dermatology research, is that in the kind of most positive way possible, we were not able to replicate the development of hypercalcemia in cats that are placed on therapeutic renal foods that either have the nutrition of K/D or a test food that has a very similar nutritional profile to K/D.

And that's a very encouraging finding. We are pleased to see that we can say that we do not have any evidence at this time, when cats are placed on our therapeutic renal diets that they will develop hypercalcemia when they're given a moderate calcium phosphorus ratio and exclude certain types of highly water soluble inorganic phosphorus sources.

Morgan Key, BS: And then just taking on that dermatology aspect of it. So I think something that we're going to touch on in our talk will be highlighting some survey data that we have of the need for multimodal support when we're looking at treating or supporting pets with a [dermatology] condition. And so we're going to highlight that when we asked general practitioner veterinarians if they're using a multimodal support plan.

We didn't see as high of compliance or agreement if that's what they were opting to utilize. And so I think, hopefully the key takeaway here is, with some of the research, we're going to be able to present and just demonstrate the impact of nutrition alone, and then also if we can incorporate that into the multimodal support plan with pharmaceuticals and topicals, really taking away how this can benefit even puppies.

So we'll be talking on some new research looking into puppies with allergies as well.