[Felvtalk] Questioning FELV diagnosis

Amani Oakley aoakley at oakleylegal.com
Thu Dec 15 20:58:15 CST 2016


Good luck. Let us know if you are successful in getting a prescription.

Amani

From: Felvtalk [mailto:felvtalk-bounces at felineleukemia.org] On Behalf Of Randy Henke
Sent: December-15-16 9:57 PM
To: felvtalk at felineleukemia.org
Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] Questioning FELV diagnosis

Thank you, Amani. I will be talking to my vet tomorrow and will definitely mention Winstrol.

On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 8:02 PM, Amani Oakley <aoakley at oakleylegal.com<mailto:aoakley at oakleylegal.com>> wrote:
Randy

Regardless of the cause of the anemia, I have repeatedly recommended Winstrol (Stanazolol) which is used for intractable severe anemia in humans and animals. If you are new to this group, you may not have seen the difficulty most people face when trying to get Winstrol for their cats. See if your vet will prescribe it, but be aware that a vet usually has to order it from a compounding pharmacy. I agree that you should also use prednisone (or prednisolone, as recommended by others) along with the Winstrol.

Amani

From: Felvtalk [mailto:felvtalk-bounces at felineleukemia.org<mailto:felvtalk-bounces at felineleukemia.org>] On Behalf Of Randy Henke
Sent: December-14-16 1:48 PM
To: felvtalk at felineleukemia.org<mailto:felvtalk at felineleukemia.org>
Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] Questioning FELV diagnosis

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<mailto: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<mailto: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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