Skip to content
BengalinatorsNiederösterreich
DE2 KittensavailableScan with your phoneorOpen in WhatsApp Web

Bengalinators journal

The drug that is meant to make cats live longer

For months the news has been going round that a drug from Japan could let cats reach thirty. There is real research behind it, and the good part is that you can read it yourself: the key papers are freely available and linked below. They are remarkable — and small. Eleven cats were treated. Both belong in the same summary.

Why cats in particular so often develop kidney disease

The blood of every mammal contains a protein with the unwieldy name AIM (apoptosis inhibitor of macrophage). Its job is refuse collection: when debris from dead cells builds up in the fine tubules of the kidney, AIM attaches to it and marks it for the immune system’s scavenger cells. The tubule clears, the kidney recovers.

For AIM to do that, it first has to detach from an antibody called IgM, on which it is parked in the blood. This is exactly where cats have a problem. A group around Toru Miyazaki at the University of Tokyo showed in 2016 that feline AIM sticks to IgM roughly a thousand times more tightly than mouse AIM does — the cause being an unusual cluster of positively charged amino acids in the feline protein.

So the refuse lorry never sets off. That is the explanation offered ever since for an uncomfortable observation: that chronic kidney disease is more common in old cats than in almost any other pet.

What the treatment study measured

In February 2026 the study behind the headlines appeared in The Veterinary Journal. It examined laboratory-made AIM given to cats with advanced kidney disease.

Of 216 cats screened, those entered the study whose creatinine lay between 2.9 and 5.0 mg/dL — that is advanced kidney disease, not its beginning. Among 26 cats that also had high indoxyl sulfate, a uraemic toxin, six received mouse AIM, five received feline AIM and fifteen went untreated. They were followed for one year.

The difference is clear. The untreated cats lived a median of 167 days. After 360 days, 20 per cent of the untreated cats were alive, against 80 to 83 per cent of the treated ones. Kidney values and uraemic toxins also stopped worsening under treatment.

  • Treated: 11 cats (6 with mouse AIM, 5 with feline AIM)
  • Untreated comparison group: 15 cats
  • Observation period: 360 days
  • Alive after one year: 80–83 % treated, 20 % untreated
  • Median survival without treatment: 167 days

What does not follow from this

The authors themselves call their work an exploratory, explicitly non-pivotal study. That is not modesty but the correct classification: eleven treated animals are very few. The paper gives a range of uncertainty, and for the feline variant it runs from 44 to 100 per cent survivors. Between “every second one dies" and “all of them live" lies a world, and the figures cover both.

Second, these were severely ill cats. The study says nothing about healthy ones — and therefore nothing about whether a healthy cat given AIM lives longer. The number thirty comes from interviews with the researcher, not from the data.

Third, a detail that is easily missed: nine further cats with low uraemic toxin levels survived the year at one hundred per cent — without any treatment at all. Who is admitted to a study therefore has a considerable say in how dramatic the difference turns out.

None of this makes the work poor. It makes it what it is: a strong signal that deserves a large, properly blinded trial — and does not yet replace one.

An independent finding from the United States

More interesting than a second study from the same group is one from a different group. In 2025 a team at Washington State University published a genetic investigation of cats with kidney disease in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine.

They found a variant of the feline AIM gene — a duplication in the section called exon 3 — in 62 per cent of the DNA samples examined. Cats carrying two copies of this variant more often had a more advanced disease stage and more often showed deteriorating kidney values than cats without it.

That is a different approach, a different group, a different continent — and the same direction. In research, independent corroboration of this kind counts for considerably more than another result from the same laboratory.

What this means for your cat today

First: there is nothing to buy. On 24 April 2026 the Tokyo company IAM CAT applied to the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture for approval as a veterinary medicine; the review is under way. Even an approval would apply to Japan first. No AIM preparation for cats is authorised in the European Union.

Be careful with food advertised as containing “AIM". What was studied is a laboratory-made protein that is administered — not a food. Whether a food achieves anything comparable in the body would have to be demonstrated separately; the studies discussed here do not do that.

And the unspectacular thing that really counts today: kidney disease does not hurt for a long time and shows itself late. Having your cat’s values checked regularly from middle age onwards detects it earlier than any drug can cure it. Which values make sense and how often is a question for your vet — that is where this article stops and the consulting room begins.

Sources

Read the original research.

We deliberately link to the original scientific records. Links open in a new tab.

Continue reading

Related pages and guides.

Health screening in Bengal catsLiving with a Bengal catAll journal articles