[Felvtalk] Questioning FELV diagnosis

[Randy Henke]

Our cat, Curly, is ten years old. We found her outside as a kitten and had
her tested for FELV at that time. She was negative. She's been strictly an
indoor cat since then and had no contact with any potentially infected cats.

Three months ago, she wasn't acting like herself. Very lethargic and
moderately dehydrated. We took her to the vet. She was running a low fever
and her blood test showed severe anemia and low white cell count. The vet
suspected immune mediated hemolytic anemia. He gave her some fluids,
started her on an antibiotic for any potential infections and prednisone.
Three days later she was about the same so we took her back to the vet.
This time they ran an ELISA test to rule out FELV even though it was
incredibly unlikely given her history. It came back positive. They drew
blood at that time for an IFA test to confirm it and told us to discontinue
the prednisone immediately.

By the next day, Curly was feeling better and she quickly bounced back to
her old self which I suspect was due to the three days of prednisone
treatment. The IFA test came back negative.

We were content to think the ELISA was a false positive because Curly
seemed fine until a couple of weeks ago when she became listless and
anti-social again. Another blood test showed her to again be very anemic.

We are very confused about what to do. The negative IFA really has me
wondering. From my understanding, that test is 99.9% accurate in detecting
the second stage of leukemia.

A negative IFA should mean only one of two things:

1. The cat is not infected with FELV.

2. The cat is in the early stages and has not progressed to the second
stage of the disease where the virus infects the bone marrow.

That would mean that, in order for the anemia to have been caused by
leukemia, the IFA should have definitely been positive at that point
because it would need to be actively compromising the bone marrow's
functioning.

I am leaning toward trying prednisone again, especially since she is hardly
eating or moving around at this point. If anyone can point out if my logic
is flawed, please do so. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Thank you,
Randy
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