Ah-choo

Ten years ago, Ebenezer Satyaraj’s (SAT-eh-rahj) daughter was playing with a friend’s cat when she started to feel sick. She had itchy eyes, a runny nose, and redness where the cat had licked her. It turned out that she was allergic to cats.

Satyaraj’s daughter is not alone—one in seven kids ages 6 to 19 are allergic to cats. Many people experience symptoms like sneezing, coughing, a runny nose, itchy eyes, and rashes.

To keep from feeling sick, some cat owners might decide to spend less time with their pet or take allergy medicine. “Allergies can hurt the relationship between people and their pet cats,” says Satyaraj.

He hopes to change that. As a scientist at the pet food company Purina, he found that adding a special ingredient to cat food could help allergy sufferers. Satyaraj and his team followed these steps in the scientific process to make their discovery.

Cat saliva contains an allergen called Fel d1. It can trigger an allergic reaction in people. When a cat licks its fur, saliva gets on its hair and into the environment. If someone with a cat allergy touches the allergen or breathes it in, the person can have an allergic reaction.

Satyaraj asked: Can the allergic reaction be prevented?

Satyaraj and his team knew that when chickens spend time around cats, they produce a protein called an antibody. The antibodies build up in their eggs. These antibodies can attach to cat allergens. This makes the allergen inactive, blocking its effects. The researchers wondered if they could extract the antibodies from chicken eggs and feed them to cats. That way the cats would produce allergens that weren’t active. Satyaraj designed an experiment to see if this would help stop allergic reactions in people.

Scientists kept 105 cats in a facility that was set up just like a home. For 10 weeks, some of the cats ate food that contained the antibody. Another group of cats ate the same food without the antibody mixed in. The scientists also gathered blankets that the cats had slept on. The blankets had fur on them from the cats.

People with cat allergies sat in a room for three hours while fans blew air over the blankets toward them. The people then noted their allergy symptoms every 15 minutes.

Satyaraj studied the allergens on the cats’ hair. He found that cats that had been fed the special food had about half the amount of active allergens on their fur as the other cats had.

People exposed to the fur of these cats had less severe allergic reactions than people exposed to the fur of cats that didn’t eat the special food. Symptoms such as watery eyes and sneezing decreased. Just as Satyaraj had hoped, the food was lessening allergy symptoms.

The team is now working to get the food to cat owners. Satyaraj thinks it will be in stores this year.

Cat lovers may soon get to enjoy their pets without having an allergy attack. “Now it’s just a matter of time before my daughter asks for a pet cat!” says Satyaraj.