Clinicopathological findings associated with feline infectious peritonitis in Sydney, Australia: 42 cases (1990–2002)

Abstract

The study highlights the diverse range of clinical manifestations and the complexities experienced by clinicians in diagnosing this fatal disease. Some aspects of the epidemiology and clinical manifestations of feline infectious peritonitis appear different to the disease encountered in Europe and North America, most notably the over-representation of specific breeds and the presence of immune-mediated haemolytic anaemia.

Epidemiological data and a score-based study of renal, hepatic and cerebral lesions in feline infectious peritonitis

“…Although the reason(s) for the predominance of FIP-associated renal lesions is unclear, several factors can be considered as contributory towards the development of these alterations. The kidney is the organ that is more frequently affected in FIP (BERG et al, 2005;ADDIE et al, 2009;PEDERSEN, 2009;MELI, 2014), and retrospective studies have shown that a large percentage of cats have FIP-associated renal disease (OLIVEIRA et al, 2003;NORRIS et al, 2005); these findings are in accordance with the results of our investigation. The kidney has a single circulatory system, receives 20% of the cardiac output, is composed of two distinct capillary beds (glomerular and peritubular capillary network), with a complex array of afferent arterioles, resulting in a blood flow that is approximately 40 times more elevated than the other organs (BLANTZ; GABBAI, 2005).…”

“…The pathological alterations observed during this investigations are similar to those described in cases of FIP (HARTMANN, 2005;NORRIS et al, 2005;PEDERSEN, 2009;PEDERSEN et al, 2015), considering that a definitive diagnostic of FIP is based on the histopathologic evaluation of the tissues of the affected cat (DRECHSLER et al, 2011). Most organs evaluated during this investigation had some degree of pyogranulomatous inflammatory reaction with an associated vasculitis; pyogranulomatous inflammation and vasculitis are the hallmarks FIP (KIPAR et al, 2005;PEDERSEN, 2009;DRECHSLER et al, 2011;PEDERSEN et al, 2015).…”

“…Alternatively, male cats with FIP were overrepresented in an epidemiological study from Australia (NORRIS et al, 2005). In our study, no statistical difference (P=0.437) was observed when mixed-breed cats with FIP were compared with their pure breed counterparts.…”

“…In our study, no statistical difference (P=0.437) was observed when mixed-breed cats with FIP were compared with their pure breed counterparts. However, purebred Abyssinians, Bengal, Himalayan, Ragdoll (PESTEANU-SOMOGYI et al, 2006), and Burmese (NORRIS et al, 2005;PESTEANU-SOMOGYI et al, 2006) cats were considered as having a more elevated risk to develop FIP. In addition, domestic short hair cats were also over represented in a German study (RIEMER et al, 2016).…”

“…Epidemiological studies of FIP have been reported from different countries, demonstrating that cats with less one-year-old and cats living in shelters are more predisposed to contracting FIP, including Australia (NORRIS et al, 2005;BELL et al, 2006;WORTHING et al, 2012), Austria (BENETKA et al, 2004), Brazil (OLIVEIRA et al, 2003;SANTOS et al, 2013), Japan (TANAKA et al, 2015), Turkey (TEKELIOGLU et al, 2015), USA (HARTMANN, 2005;PESTEANU-SOMOGYI et al, 2006;PEDERSEN, 2009), and Germany (RIEMER et al, 2016). However, none of these have investigated the degree of tissue destruction associated with FIP.…”