Health
Gene Therapy May Offer Birth Control for Cats
For all the cats who share our homes as companion animals, there is a vast shadow world of strays — a sprawling and fast-breeding crowd.
Their lives are plagued by the threat of infectious diseases, predators and fast-moving cars. And they are major predators themselves, hunting down millions of birds and small mammals annually.
In the United States, volunteers are especially active in trapping the cats, bringing them to clinics to get surgically sterilized, and then returning them to their colonies. But controlling stray cat populations is costly and logistically cumbersome. Many communities, especially in countries outside the United States and Europe, lack the veterinary and economic resources to coordinate such efforts.
“Coming up with an alternative to surgery has been a goal for a lot of people for decades, and there just hasn’t been anything else that’s proven to be effective,” said William Swanson, director of animal research at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden.
Such a method might finally be on the horizon. In a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, a single shot of a gene therapy prevented pregnancy in cats for at least two years. The study was extremely small: Six female cats that received the gene therapy shot were compared to three who did not.
By limiting the study size to just a few cats, the researchers were able to track each one extensively, analyzing 15,220 freeze-dried poop samples for estrogen and progesterone levels and examining 1,200 hours of video of mating behavior, Dr. Swanson said.
The contraceptive shot delivers a gene that enters muscle cells, enabling them to pump out a substance called anti-Müllerian hormone, or AMH, which interferes with the development of egg follicles in the ovaries.
Researchers cautioned that much more research would be needed to test the preliminary findings. And if larger studies confirm that the treatment — the first gene therapy developed specifically for animals — is safe and effective over a cat’s lifetime, controlling cat populations won’t require the surgical expertise of veterinarians, Dr. Swanson said.
David Pépin, a reproductive biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, was originally studying AMH as a potential therapy for ovarian cancer, but decided to look at its effect on ovaries. When he injected the hormone into mice, their ovaries shrunk to newborn size, suggesting AMH might have contraceptive properties.
Dr. Pépin is investigating the potential use of AMH in people, not as a gene therapy but as a pill or injection that must be taken continuously. Most contraceptives today prevent ovulation, but AMH would act earlier, blocking follicles from maturing.
He thinks that it might be useful for women who could not take birth control pills with progesterone or estrogen for medical reasons or that it could help women undergoing cancer treatments preserve their fertility. “It’s a hormone that we didn’t get to play with before that potentially has many different applications in women’s health,” he said.
As a gene therapy that could be permanent, the use of AMH in people is unlikely. “But it’s actually the perfect tool to control cat overpopulation,” he said. Four of the cats in the study did not show behaviors indicating they were ready to mate, and two allowed male cats to mate with them, but did not ovulate.
Dr. Pépin and Dr. Swanson, an expert in feline reproduction (and a scientific advisory board member of the Michelson Found Animals Foundation, which funded the work), are planning a larger study that could support an application to the Food and Drug Administration to consider approving the therapy to be marketed for use in cats.
They are also testing the therapy in kittens, which can be treated starting at eight weeks of age, as well as in dogs, which also have enormous stray populations, particularly in other countries.
“This is really exciting, and I hope it will pan out,” said Julie Levy, a veterinarian at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine in Gainesville, who was not involved with the study. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could send out a technician into the field to inject cats and then let them go?”
The study is an example of the Michelson foundation’s practice of “throwing a lot of big money at the problem” to find nonsurgical contraception for stray cats and dogs, said Dr. Levy, who works with cats in outdoor colonies and shelters, both in the United States and abroad.
But she cautioned that there was still much to learn from a larger study, such as how long the shot lasts, whether it is as safe as it seems, and what proportion of cats it will actually protect from pregnancy, “because it probably won’t be 100 percent.”
Others note that it might not be quite so easy. If the shot is effective, long-lasting and cheaper than spay and neuter surgery, it could be very valuable, said Autumn Davidson, a veterinarian at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine in Ithaca, N.Y. But to receive the injection, animals have to be captured, and queens who are adept at evading people’s traps might still make population control a struggle.
Ivanka Trump, the daughter of incoming President Donald Trump, has been known to lead an active life.
As the mother of three kids and a lover of outdoor sports, the 43-year-old is always on the move, recently adding jiu-jitsu to her mix of physical activity.
In a recent appearance on The Skinny Confidential Him & Her podcast, Trump shared how her daughter, Arabella, expressed interest in learning self-defense when she was 11.
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“I’m just so in awe of [her],” Trump said about her daughter. “She came to me and said, ‘As a woman, I feel like I need to know how to defend myself, and I don’t have a confidence level yet that I can do that.’”
Ivanka Trump plays with her daughter, Arabella Rose Kushner, in the Rose Garden during a Congressional Picnic on the South Lawn of the White House in June 2017. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Trump responded, “At 11 … I was not thinking about how to physically defend myself, and I thought it was the coolest thing.”
After researching self-defense options, Trump enrolled Arabella, now 13, in jiu-jitsu (martial arts) classes with the Valente Brothers in Miami, Florida – and soon the whole family joined in.
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“[Arabella] started asking me to join – I joined,” she said. “Then my two sons wanted to do what their older sister was doing. Then my husband joined … It is good for everyone.”
“It’s almost like a moving meditation.”
Trump, who is now a blue belt in jiu-jitsu, described that she likes how the sport “meshes physical movement.”
“It’s almost like a moving meditation because the movements are so micro,” she said. “It’s like three-dimensional chess.”
“There’s like a real spiritualism to it … The grounding in sort of samurai tradition and culture and wisdom.”
During President Trump’s first term in the White House, Ivanka Trump noted that she had very little focus on fitness, only taking weekly runs with husband Jared Kushner and “chasing the kids around the house.”
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Trump shared that she was “never a gym person,” but always loved sports, which still holds true today.
She said she enjoys skiing, surfing and racquet sports like padel tennis (a hybrid of tennis and squash) and pickle ball, which she described as “fun and social.”
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are seen out for a walk with their children on Dec. 10, 2022, in Miami, Florida. (MEGA/GC Images)
‘Elevating awareness’
On the podcast, Trump said she was drawn to jiu-jitsu because it combines physical fitness and philosophy.
It also focuses more on how to extract yourself from a dangerous situation before having to harm someone who’s a threat, she noted.
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“Having these skills makes you less likely to get into a fight, not more likely to,” Trump went on.
“Once you have the confidence that you can sort of move out of a situation, there’s a real focus on elevating awareness.”
Ivanka Trump waves as she arrives at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland for US President Donald Trump’s departure on Jan. 20, 2021. (ALEX EDELMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
In a previous interview with Fox News Digital, Rener Gracie, head instructor of jiu-jitsu at Gracie University in California, stressed that the only truly reliable skills are those that have been “mastered into muscle memory.”
This occurs through extensively practicing self-defense methods like Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which are “leverage-based and don’t rely on you having a physical advantage over the subject,” he noted.
“Having these skills makes you less likely to get into a fight, not more likely to.”
“And by that, I mean strength, speed, power and size — because in almost every case, the attacker is going to target someone who they feel is physically inferior to them.”
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Gracie, whose family created Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship), shared that jiu-jitsu is “highly sought after” because it only takes weeks or months for someone to “develop the core skills that could keep them safe in a violent physical encounter.”
‘Transformative’ strength training
In addition to mastering self-defense skills, Ivanka Trump recently revealed a shift in her fitness routine to include weightlifting and resistance training.
On Instagram, Trump posted a video displaying different exercises with various equipment in the gym, noting in the caption that she used to focus primarily on cardio, yoga and Pilates.
“Since moving to Miami, I have shifted my focus to weightlifting and resistance training, and it has been transformative in helping me build muscle and shift my body composition in ways I hadn’t imagined,” she wrote.
“I believe in a strength training approach built on foundational, time-tested and simple movements – squats, deadlifts, hinges, pushes and pulls. These are the cornerstones of my workout, emphasizing functional strength for life.”
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Trump added that prioritizing form is “essential” to ensure results before adding on weight.
“This ensures a safe and steady progression while maintaining the integrity of each movement,” she continued. “I incorporate mobility work within my sessions to enhance range of motion.”
“I believe in a strength training approach built on foundational, time-tested and simple movements – squats, deadlifts, hinges, pushes and pulls,” Ivanka Trump wrote in an October Instagram post. (Ivanka Trump/Instagram)
“Weightlifting has enhanced not just my strength but my overall athleticism and resilience,” she added.
Trump said she dedicates three to four days a week to strength training, including two solo sessions and two with a personal trainer.
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She also said that increasing her protein intake has also been “critical” to her progress.
“I now consume between 30 and 50 grams of protein a meal,” she said. “It works … I’ve never been stronger!”
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are seen arriving at the beachside eatery on May 2, 2024, in Miami Beach, Florida. (MEGA/GC Images)
Trump also still enjoys weekly yoga sessions, spending time outdoors with her children and playing sports with friends, she said.
“I also incorporate a couple of short (10-minute), high-intensity interval training sessions (such as sprints) each week to keep my cardiovascular fitness sharp and dynamic,” she noted.
“This balanced approach has infused new energy into my fitness routine and yielded great results.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Ivanka Trump for comment.
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