{"id":1279,"date":"2013-07-01T11:11:18","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T01:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=1279"},"modified":"2013-07-30T11:53:07","modified_gmt":"2013-07-30T01:53:07","slug":"challenges-in-prognostication-of-fiv-positive-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=1279","title":{"rendered":"Challenges in prognostication of FIV-positive patients"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jules<\/a>
Veterinarian Julia Beatty with FIV positive rescue cat Bob.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nA Sydney University study published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine<\/em> found that the presence of haematologic and biochemical abnormalities could not be relied upon to determine clinical progression of FIV in sick feline patients, and that FIV-positive status alone did not have a negative impact on survival.\r\n\r\nThe authors set out to compare signalment, complete blood count and biochemistry panel, major clinical problem and survival between client-owned FIV-positive and uninfected domestic cats. The retrospective study, one of the largest of its kind, involved 520 cats tested for FIV.\r\n\r\nWhilst reasonably straightforward to diagnose, often with an in-house antibody detection kit, feline experts continue to puzzle about how FIV contributes to disease status. Naturally infected cats present with a range of clinical signs including stomatitis, cachexia, atypical, refractory or recurrent infections, neurologic signs, persistent cytopaenias and immune-mediated disease \u2013 but these problems are often seen in FIV-negative cats too. With the exception of a small subset of lymphomas, AIDS-defining illnesses are not recognised for FIV. Additionally, many FIV-positive cats remain asymptomatic with a normal life expectancy.\r\n\r\nIn experimental studies of FIV infection, cats have shown progressive aberrations in measures of immune function such as lymphocyte subset counts and mitogen responsiveness, but these changes are rarely associated with clinical signs.\r\n\r\nThe overall prevalence of FIV in the study population was 14.6 per cent, with mixed-breed, older male cats at highest risk. However, the authors found that while lymphoid malignancies were slightly more common in the FIV-infected cohort, haematologic abnormalities, biochemical abnormalities or both were common in FIV-infected and non-infected cats.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe found that a lot of the FIV-positive cats were anaemic and leukopaenic \u2013 but so were the non-FIV positive cats,\u201d group leader Julia Beatty said.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe big challenge with FIV-positive, sick cats is to determine whether FIV is actually contributing to the clinical signs of the animal.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe study\u2019s findings suggest that veterinarians can\u2019t rely on haematology and biochemistry results to determine whether FIV is contributing to the disease status of a particular cat.\r\n\r\nBeatty pointed out that monitoring FIV progression is not equivalent to monitoring HIV progression in human patients.\r\n\r\n\u201cIn feline patients we don\u2019t have surrogate markets like CD4 counts used in humans with HIV \u2013 and our study has now found that the CBC and biochem panel doesn\u2019t tell us as much as perhaps we previously thought it did.\u201d\r\n\r\nMost previous studies which looked at CBC and biochemistry results in FIV-positive cats had not utilised FIV-negative controls.\r\n\r\n\u201cOur study highlights the importance of using a control sample when ascribing clinical importance to changes in CBC and biochemistry parameters,\u201d Beatty said.\r\n\r\nFor veterinarians in practice, that means that clinicians should prognosticate without regard to FIV-status.\r\n\r\n\u201cIf the cat is intractably azotaemic, cachectic or not responding to antibiotics, these may indicate a poor prognosis, but that is the case regardless of the FIV status of the cat,\u201d Beatty said.\r\n\r\nThere is some good news for owners of FIV-positive cats. The study confirmed that survival time was comparable for FIV-infected and non-infected cats.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis contradicts a still widely-held belief that FIV infection necessarily reduces lifespan, but is consistent with recent case control studies,\u201d Beatty said.\r\n\r\nANNE FAWCETT<\/strong>\r\n\r\nReference<\/strong>\r\n\r\nLiem BP, Dhand NK, Pepper AE, Barrs VR and Beatty JA (2013) Clinical findings and survival in cats naturally infected with feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV). Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine<\/em>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Sydney University study published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine found that the presence of haematologic and biochemical abnormalities could not be relied upon to determine clinical progression of FIV in sick feline patients, and that FIV-positive status alone did not have a negative impact on survival. The authors set out to compare […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[165,97,944,1171,1174,139,1173,1172,838],"class_list":["post-1279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-cats","tag-disease","tag-felines","tag-fiv","tag-hiv","tag-infection","tag-journal-of-veterinary-internal-medicine","tag-jules-beatty","tag-sydney-university"],"rise-blocks_total_comments":1,"rise-blocks_categories":[{"term_id":5,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":402,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":5,"category_count":402,"category_description":"","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0}],"rise-blocks_excerpt":"A Sydney University study published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine found that the presence of haematologic and biochemical abnormalities could not be relied upon to determine clinical progression of FIV in sick feline patients, and that FIV-positive status alone did not have a negative impact on survival. The authors set out to compare signalment, complete blood count and..","blog_post_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","full":""},"categories_names":{"5":{"name":"News","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?cat=5"}},"tags_names":{"165":{"name":"cats","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=cats"},"97":{"name":"disease","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=disease"},"944":{"name":"felines","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=felines"},"1171":{"name":"FIV","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=fiv"},"1174":{"name":"HIV","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=hiv"},"139":{"name":"infection","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=infection"},"1173":{"name":"Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=journal-of-veterinary-internal-medicine"},"1172":{"name":"Jules Beatty","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=jules-beatty"},"838":{"name":"Sydney University","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=sydney-university"}},"comments_number":"1","wpmagazine_modules_lite_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","cvmm-medium":"","cvmm-medium-plus":"","cvmm-portrait":"","cvmm-medium-square":"","cvmm-large":"","cvmm-small":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1279"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1368,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1279\/revisions\/1368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}