Introduction

The veterinary teaching hospital admits many feline patients with a large variety of diseases; the growing number of cats infected with FeLV is causing concern for cat owners and veterinarians. Large numbers of cats are exposed to risk factors because of lack of information concerning this infection.

Objective

Collect data from patient records to establish a clear picture of most prevalent manifestations possibly linked to infection with FeLV; to raise awareness in the veterinary community about this deadly disease.

Methods

All records from cats seen from January, 2013 to July, 2015 were reviewed. One hundred and fourteen cats tested positive for FeLV with SNAP ELISA kit (IDEXX®). Clinical and laboratory findings of these cats were recorded.

Results

Many cats had more than one manifestation of disease that could be related to FeLV infection, and others were clinically normal. From the 114 cases, 35.96% (41/114) had no clinical signs. The cats that had any clinical sign or comorbidity are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Clinical findings in the 73 cats tested positive for FeLV with any clinical sign

Conclusions

FeLV infection is common in this hospital setting and many people, including owners and veterinarians, are still not aware of it. Different manifestations associated with this infection and even the fact that many cats have no clinical signs emphasizes the importance of massive testing of any cat recently acquired or presented to be treated. In this setting, it was more common to see proliferative disease like lymphoma. Even if it is not shown here, we know for fact that the majority of these cats were young and the mortality is high.