Contributions of Feline Retrovirus Studies to Human Medicine

―Feline Immunodeficiency Virus Infection―

Abstract

  Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) was first isolated from a cluster of cats with suspected immunodeficiency syndrome. The genetic studies have confirmed that FIV is an innate virus with some homology to human and simian immunodeficiency viruses. Furthermore, FIV fails to grow in other mammalian cell cultures including human, but grows in feline peripheral blood mononuclear cells, kidney cells and interleukin 2 dependent T-cell lines. Infection of cats with FIV results in five distinctive clinical stages similar to those observed in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Following acute phase and asymptomatic carrier phase, a number of chronic diseases occur in infected animals, and the clinical manifestations are closely associated with development of immunodeificiency as measured by lymphocyte subset studies or by blastogenesis assay. The advantage of this feline system as an animal model for human AIDS includes ease of experimental infection using specific pathogen free cats with a relatively smaller cost and space, safety to other species including human, and similar clinical manifestations as well as the virologic relations. The safety is a major consideration in carrying out large scaled screening studies. Thus, basic pathogenesis studies and drug therapy screening will be the major fields that this system potentially can contribute to the human medicine.