Evidence Hub

2020 AAFP Feline Retrovirus Testing and Management Guidelines

Little S, Levy J, Hartmann K, Hofmann-Lehmann R, Hosie M, Olah G, Denis KS

Journal of feline medicine and surgery, 2020

132 citations

Abstract

Clinical importance: Feline leukemia virus (FeLV) and feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) infections are found in cats worldwide. Both infections are associated with a variety of clinical signs and can impact quality of life and longevity.

Scope: This document is an update of the 2008 American Association of Feline Practitioners' feline retrovirus management guidelines and represents current knowledge on pathogenesis, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of retrovirus infections in cats.

Testing and interpretation: Although vaccines are available for FeLV in many countries and for FIV in some countries, identification of infected cats remains an important factor for preventing new infections. The retrovirus status of every cat at risk of infection should be known. Cats should be tested as soon as possible after they are acquired, following exposure to an infected cat or a cat of unknown infection status, prior to vaccination against FeLV or FIV, and whenever clinical illness occurs. It might not be possible to determine a cat's infection status based on testing at a single point in time; repeat testing using different methods could be required. Although FeLV and FIV infections can be associated with clinical disease, some infected cats, especially those infected with FIV, can live for many years with good quality of life.

Management of infected cats: There is a paucity of data evaluating treatments for infected cats, especially antiretroviral and immunomodulatory drugs.…

How strong is the evidence?

Evidence Hub reads this as a guideline, done in animal, not in people. Its evidence level is 5 of 5 (Very low · case / narrative / animal / in vitro / in silico). Case reports, narrative reviews, and animal, cell or computer-model studies give the weakest evidence for human health.

How the five levels of evidence work. The level is assigned automatically from the abstract and can be wrong, so check the paper.

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free