BREEDING endangered cheetahs in captivity is often a long shot, partly because so many die of amyloidosis, a disease which can cause organ failure.
Now a team led by Keiichi Higuchi of Shinshu University Graduate School of Medicine in Matsumoto, Japan, thinks the disease might be transmitted from cheetah to cheetah via their faeces.
Amyloidosis, which affects many different species, develops when the amyloid protein forms insoluble clumps or fibrils in internal organs, such as the kidney.
In the study, Higuchi and his colleagues discovered these fibrils in cheetah faeces (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0800367105).…
