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Feline Vector-borne Diseases
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Mary Thompson
BVSc (Hons), Dipl. ACVIM (SAIM), MANZCVS
Dr Thompson graduated from the University of Sydney, completed a small animal internal medicine residency at Purdue University, and has been board-certified with the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine since 2001. Her research interests include Rickettsia felis, recurrent urinary tract infection, multi-drug resistant E. coli, and food-borne toxicities. She is currently an associate professor in Small Animal Medicine at Murdoch University and immediate past-president and current vice-president of both the Feline and Small Animal Medicine Chapters of the Australian and New Zealand College of Veterinary Scientists.
Peter Irwin
BVetMed, PhD, MRCVS, FANZCVS
Dr Irwin graduated from the Royal Veterinary College in London, completed a PhD at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, and became a fellow of the Australian and New Zealand College of Veterinary Scientists in 1995. Dr Irwin is currently professor of Veterinary Clinical Science and co-director of the Vector- and Water-Borne Pathogen Research Group at Murdoch University. He is an internationally recognized expert in vector-borne diseases, with a current research focus on tick-borne infections of companion animals, wildlife and humans in Australia.
Key Points
- Arthropod-transmitted pathogens are a significant cause of emerging infectious disease in cats, with pet travel, periurban development, outdoor lifestyle, and climate change all being contributory factors.
- Recent improvements in diagnostic testing have helped to improve knowledge of feline vector-borne diseases (FVBD).
- Chronic, concurrent, and immunomodulatory diseases may cause recrudescence of FVBD.
- An awareness of vector-borne disease is necessary when considering blood transfusion in cats.
- Some FVBD have zoonotic implications, and veterinarians must remain vigilant.
- Regular application of ectoparasiticides is the key to controlling FVBD.
Introduction
By comparison with diseases transmitted to dogs by hematophagous (blood-feeding) arthropods, veterinarians appear to be relatively unaware about the global importance of feline vector-borne diseases (FVBD) (1). However, with greater understanding of FVBD, it should come as no surprise that many of the factors responsible for emerging infectious diseases in canines and humans are also relevant to our feline patients. Whenever a blood transfusion for a client’s cat is required, or a feline patient presents with unexplained fever, anemia or thrombocytopenia, the clinician should always consider the possibility of a blood-borne, arthropod-transmitted infection. This brief review aims to provide veterinary practitioners with an insight to the key issues pertaining to the distribution, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of FVBD.
FVBD: worldwide distribution, emergence and significance
Vector-borne diseases are caused by pathogens transmitted by blood-feeding arthropods, including fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, sand flies, lice, and triatomine bugs. These diseases have a worldwide distribution (Table 1), yet there are important regional variations in their prevalence due to differences in the geographical ranges and habitat preferences of their respective arthropod vectors. Climate variations in temperature and humidity play key roles in explaining the presence of one species or another; for example, hygrophilic ticks such as Ixodes and Dermacentor spp. require humidity and do not tolerate heat and desiccation, whereas xerophilic ticks like Rhipicephalus live in warm areas and tolerate desiccation but not frost. The relative distributions of Rhipicephalus sanguineus and Dermacentor reticulatus in Europe clearly illustrate this point (Figure 1). Microenvironment is critical too; endophilic ticks such as R. sanguineus prefer enclosed environments (e.g., kennels) which explains their ability to establish in people’s homes, sometimes well beyond their usual geographical range (e.g., when the pet returns from a holiday in those regions). This contrasts with exophilic ticks that have free-living stages present in forests, woods, fields, parks and gardens.
Global warming and changing habitats as a result of deforestation and residential expansion into sylvatic landscapes are among the many drivers for the emergence and re-emergence of vector-borne diseases, and probably exposes roaming cats to arthropods with unknown vector-potential (2,3). Land-cover areas favorable for tick habitats and climatic conditions that support the tick lifecycle are strong risk factors for feline cytauxzoonosis in the USA (4), and landscape change can influence the exposure of domestic cats to indirectly transmitted infections from wild felids such as pumas and bobcats (5). Therefore, practitioners need to be informed about the ectoparasites that occur in their region, but should be equally vigilant and “expect the unexpected” when it comes to vector-borne diseases.
Despite the geographical ranges referred to above, some vectors such as the cat flea Ctenocephalides felis are truly ubiquitous; this undoubtedly explains the worldwide occurrence of the two most common FVBD, namely feline hemoplasmas and Bartonella infections (Table 1). These common hemotropic bacteria between them illustrate many enigmatic features of arthropod-transmitted diseases. The feline hemotropic mycoplasmas (“hemoplasmas”) infect red blood cells by attaching to the erythrocyte cell surface; several species of varying pathogenicity have been identified by molecular studies. Bartonella species are Gram-negative bacteria that also infect erythrocytes, as well as endothelial cells. Both groups of organisms are vector-transmitted (mostly by fleas), although other routes of infection are recognized such as fighting and via blood products (see below). These are also sometimes referred to as “stealth organisms”; i.e., subclinical infection with these bacteria is common (making diagnosis problematic), but clinical disease is rare. That said, Mycoplasma haemofelis (Figure 2) in particular is a significant feline pathogen, causing pallor, lethargy, anorexia, weight loss, dehydration, and pyrexia, along with life-threatening anemia, and requires treatment with tetracycline, doxycycline or fluoroquinolones, together with compatible (typed or cross-matched) blood transfusions or other blood products in many cases. [...]
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