WildLife Group of the SAVA
The Quick
and Dead
Free-ranging cheetahs are considered endangered primarily due to habitat loss and fragmentation as well as conflict with livestock and game farmers . Captive cheetahs provide insurance populations for re-introduction programmes and conservation education , but the sustainability of captive populations is limited by a range of unusual diseases . Like other captive non-domestic felids , cheetahs suffer from kidney disease , which is mainly seen in cheetahs over 7 years old and is the most common cause of death in cheetahs over 12 years old . Cheetahs typically have with a variable combination of glomerulonephritis and glomerulosclerosis , AA amyloidosis and chronic renal infarcts .
Previous work suggested that AA amyloidosis , which is associated with inflammation , was triggered by lymphoplasmacytic gastritis because gastritis was the most common inflammatory lesion documented in cheetahs . However , I did not find any link between gastritis and amyloidosis in a previous study on a small group ( 51 ) of cheetahs . Therefore , I did a retrospective necropsy study , on 243 captive cheetahs from the Ann van Dyk Cheetah Centre , to investigate the relationships between inflammatory alimentary tract lesions and renal lesions that were present at death . I also examined how individual renal lesions were associated with death due to chronic renal disease to determine which lesion was the most likely to cause terminal renal disease .
I found that age at death was the most important factor influencing disease prevalence . Also , that renal medullary fibrosis was the only lesion associated with the likelihood of death being due to chronic renal disease . Cheetahs with medullary fibrosis were younger , on average , than cheetahs with other renal lesions so I concluded that medullary fibrosis was the initial lesion . Apart from amyloidosis , these findings are analogous to those described in chronic renal disease in domestic cats , which is thought to result primarily from repetitive hypoxic injury of renal tubules , mediated by age and adrenalin-mediated stress responses . Cheetahs may be particularly susceptible to acute renal tubular injury due to their
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