Obesity is not only a problem for humans, but the growing trend is also now seen in domestic pets such as cats. Obese cats develop diabetes mellitus like humans; however, atherosclerosis which is often seen in obese humans does not occur in cats. Obesity often leads to the development of dyslipidemia which may lead to the development of disease. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of diet and obesity on lipoprotein classes and to compare results obtained with the standard method of ultracentrifugation to those obtained with FPLC and to NMR. Twenty-four cats were used for this study; 12 were lean and 12 were considered obese. These results show that all three methods can be used to measure feline lipids and lipoproteins, cats do develop significant changes in lipoproteins with obesity, and dietary components had little effect on the majority of concentrations of lipids and lipoproteins.
