[Felvtalk] Questioning FELV diagnosis

[Randy Henke]

I will keep everyone posted, Katherine. I'm hoping my hunch is correct that
she doesn't have FELV but she's still very sick right now.

On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 7:56 AM, Katherine K. <kathstix at gmail.com> wrote:

> Randy,
>
> I'm sorry your baby isn't feeling well. What an unusual story you shared.
> Did your vet say anything about hemobartonella? That can cause anemia, but
> I'm not very familiar with it so I can't offer much more information or
> advice there. There is a Yahoo! group called Feline_Anemia. It was pretty
> active a couple years ago, not sure about now, but at least you could
> search the archives. I had an 8 month old kitten die from anemia, but he
> was definitely FeLV positive.
>
> Talk to your vet about prednisolone, instead of prednisone. My 14 yo FeLV
> cat has been on it for a long time now. He also gets mirtazapine every few
> days, which stimulates his appetite.
>
> Keep us posted on Curly!
>
> Katherine
>
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 8:40 AM, Randy Henke <randy at magicedge.com> wrote:
>
>> 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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>>
>
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