Anti-Struvite
Efficacy
In dogs, infection-induced struvite precipitation is the most common type of urolithiasis. The infection usually concerns urease-producing Staphylococcus intermedius (Koehler et al., 2008). The enzyme urease catalyses the synthesis of ammonium from urea in the urine, which is associated with a rise in pH (Robertson et al., 2002). When the concentrations of magnesium and phosphate in urine are sufficiently high, magnesium-ammonium-phosphate (struvite) will precipitate (Robertson et al., 2002). Part of the treatment of patients with struvite urolithiasis is providing a suitable diet to dissolve existing struvite crystals and stones and to prevent recurrence of struvite development (Osborne et al., 1999). The diet should modify the composition of the urine so that the pH becomes lower than 6.5 and the concentrations of the struvite components fall (Robertson et al., 2002).
SANIMED Anti-Struvite induces an average urinary pH of 6.1. This pH will counteract the development of newly formed struvite and promote the dissolution of existing struvite. Furthermore, SANIMED Anti-Struvite has low, but adequate contents of magnesium, protein and phosphorus, which leads to low urinary concentrations of magnesium, ammonium and phosphate. The efficacy of SANIMED Anti-Struvite is substantiated by research with comparable dietary formulations in dogs with either induced or spontaneous struvite urolithiasis (Morris and Doering, 1978; Abdullahi et al., 1984; Osborne et al., 1986, 1999).