BAMBERG: FDA clears first high blood pressure drug for cats

The cause of primary hypertension is unknown, and the condition is somewhat rare, but that’s not the case for secondary hypertension. That’s when the blood pressure is higher than normal due to other factors.

Accounting for around 80 percent of all hypertension cases, according to petMD.com, other factors can include kidney disease, fluctuations in hormones, hyperthyroidism and, less commonly, diabetes.

While both cats and dogs have been treated for hypertension with human drugs, the Food and Drug Administration recently approved the first animal drug to treat systemic hypertension in cats.

Semintra, an oral drug, was approved on May 24. The active ingredient in the drug is telmisartan, which relaxes blood vessels. You feed it directly to the cat or put it on top of a small amount of food.

When a course of treatment using Semintra is started, it’s given twice a day for 14 days, then reduced to once per day but at a slightly higher dose. Your vet will monitor your cat’s blood pressure regularly and adjust the dose as needed.

When treatment is begun, the FDA recommends that cats be monitored for the development of anemia and changes in appetite, and also for side effects such as vomiting, diarrhea or weight loss. Cats with chronic kidney disease should be monitored for potential changes in kidney values.

Pregnant women are cautioned to avoid contact with Semintra because other similar drugs have been found to harm the unborn baby during pregnancy.

Measuring blood pressure in cats is similar to measuring it in humans, except that we don’t have a tail and the tail can be used to take blood pressure readings. Sometimes more than one reading is necessary because the cat’s reaction to the blood pressure cuff being inflated can influence the reading.

We mere bipeds generally accept 120/80 to be normal blood pressure for us, but for cats it’s anything below 150/95. At 160/119 treatment should be sought to limit organ damage, and at 180/120 immediate treatment should begin because of the danger of more severe complications.

PetMD.com lists 15 of the more common symptoms of high blood pressure in cats. Here are the ones that are noticeable: seizures, circling, disorientation, blindness, dilated pupils, hemorrhage of the eye, nosebleed, weakness on one side of the body or in the legs and involuntary rolling of the eyes.

These are symptoms that your veterinarian would detect upon examining your cat and completing lab work: retinal detachment, blood in the urine, protein in the urine, swollen or shrunken kidneys, heart murmur, and in the case of hyperthyroidism, a palpable thyroid gland.

The advice from Cornell is for cat owners to have their animals undergo frequent veterinary evaluations that include blood pressure checks so that problems such as kidney disease and hyperthyroidism can be caught early.