| dc.description.abstract | The feline leukemia virus (FeLV) is the most pathogenic retrovirus for the domestic cat, related
to the development of genetic abnormalities, neoplasms and immunosuppression. After infection,
patients can evolve to the abortive, atypical, regressive or progressive form of the disease. Cats
in the progressive form have persistent antigenaemia and are more susceptible to the development
of clinical changes related to FeLV. Despite the better understanding of the pathogenesis of FeLV,
there are still concerns about the laboratory abnormalities induced by the virus in patients with
progressive or regressive infection. The present study aims to evaluate clinical and laboratory
abnormalities in cats according to the FeLV status, determined by antigenic the test and PCR. The
prevalence of FeLV in the population was 20.4% (10/49), with 40% (4/10) in the regressive form
and 60% (6/10) in the progressive form of the disease. Animals considered positive for FeLV
(regressive and progressive infection) had a lower mean and higher median than FeLV-negative
cats for CHCM (33.29 vs. 35.96; student “t”, p = 0.00192) and MCV (35.60 vs. 31.81; MannWhitney, p = 0.0046), respectively. There was no difference in the concentration of lymphocytes
in the bone marrow of cats according to the infection status. However, there was a reduction in
the myeloid:erythroid ratio and an increase in the blast count, with a moderate correlation between
the increase in rubriblasts and myeloblasts, in relation to the current literature, even in healthy
cats, negative for FeLV. The CD4+/CD8+ lymphocyte ratio median was 2.096 for animals
negative for the infection, and 2.044 for positive ones (2.237 for regressors and 1.871 for
progressives), with p = 0.7438 (Kruskall-Wallis ad-hoc Dunns). From the flow cytometry, a
higher concentration of monocytes in the blood was observed in cats with persistent antigeneamia
for FeLV (2.48%) compared to those in the regressive form of the disease (0.69%) or negative
(0.73% ), with p = 0.0204 (Ad-h | |
