Herpes virus

Re: Herpes virus

CatherineThomas — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 17:56:29 GMT

Swabs have been done which showed up as positive on PCR and virus isolation, chlamydia and calici were negative.

Re: Herpes virus

James Laidlaw — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 17:25:38 GMT

Have you done swabs to check for a definitive diagnosis or just going on assumption of herpes?

Re: Herpes virus

Martin Atkinson — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:39:32 GMT

I think that you have to assume the asymptomatic vaccinated cats are clear, otherwise where do you stop? The jury is out as to whether the affected queen is a vaccine breakdown or a previously unrecognised carrier that relapsed with the stress of the new kitten. As you've said the situation isn't going to get any worse now for the present incumbents but she has to recognise that if she wants the pleasure/profit of breeding she has some tough decisions to make. At least it sounds as though she is being responsible which is more than could be said for the person she bought the kitten off. Fortunately FHV is fairly fragile so if she gets rid of the 2 sufferers/carriers she wont have to wait too long to breed from the two which appear to be immune.

Re: Herpes virus

CatherineThomas — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:05:33 GMT

I wasn't really sure as I haven't seen any of the cats, I was just going by the message left for me to call her for advice.

But I've just spoken to her and got the full story. She has 4 cats in total at the moment. One of which is a breeding queen who lives in the house. 2 are outdoor cats who come into the kitchen to eat but are never in contact with the queen. All 3 of these are vaccinated and have never had respiratory problems before. The 4th is the kitten that she brought in. There aren't any other kittens at the moment. She was kind of quarantining the kitten by keeping it in a room on its own but wasn't being so careful with contamination on her clothing etc. The kitten had a course of vaccinations before she acquired it, I don't have the full details of those vaccinations. After 2 weeks of "quarantine" the kitten went off it's food, started sneezing and having occular discharge. The queen then also started having watery eyes and the odd sneeze but has remained otherwise unaffected.

This sounds to me like the kitten brought the infection in, although the breeder of the kitten denies any problems in her cats.

Fortunately she realises that she can no longer breed while this problem continues and is either going to have to give up breeding or get rid of her queen and the kitten. I think the queen will be easier to find a home for as she is less likely to have recurrent symptoms and more likely to be a silent carrier due to her fully vaccinated status. But as the kitten had only just been vaccinated it is more likely to display recurrent respiratory symptoms.

We also don't know if the other 2 cats were or are now carriers and due to intermittent shedding I don't think we can prove that they are not carriers. I've just spoken to someone at the University of glasgow lab and she says we could try to induce shedding by putting the cats in a stressful situation such as cattery and swabbing 7-10 days later. But if we get a negative result we still can't say with any confidence that they are not carriers.

Re: Herpes virus

Martin Atkinson — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 13:33:12 GMT

You've stated that the cats are vaccinated but I'm not clear from what you are saying if the affected kittens were vaccinated or not. You are correct that the majority will become carriers post infection and subsequent vaccination will have no effect on this. However, if a significant number of vaccinated cats/kittens have become symptomatic it is unlikely there would be that much of a vaccine breakdown, the odd one yes, so it may be that a number of your breeder's cats were already carriers and the stress of new animals coming in has reduced their immune system and allowed them to become viraemic and symptomatic. Either way, as you've said, there is little point getting rid of the new kitten on its own and sadly there is little that she can do other than cull or remove the affected cats or the cycle perpetuates. Unfortunately, most breeders understandably wont do this so the problem goes on ad infinitum.