Further Studies on the Blood and the Hematopoietic Tissues in Malignant Panleucopenia of Cats

Abstract

In a recent report (1) we described a highly fatal epizootic disease of cats which, we demonstrated, is caused by a filterable agent. The usual clinical course is characterized by a fulminating leucopenia associated with 1 or 2 days of manifest illness during which vomiting, moderate elevation of temperature and progressive anorexia and weakness are almost constant features. A large series of autopsies with tissue sections showed the constant, outstanding pathological changes restricted to the bone marrow, lymphoid tissues and intestines. In these affected organs eosinophilic intranuclear inclusion bodies were found to be a characteristic feature. We have more recently, through the observation and autopsy of approximately 50 more kittens suffering from this infection, noted several pathological changes, not previously described, related to the blood and the hematopoietic tissues. The description of these which forms the matter of this report is of value, we believe, in the interpretation of the causes underlying the observed quantitative abnormalities of the cellular elements of the blood.

Experimental Feline Panleucopenia in the Conventional Cat

“…Large nucleoli were sometimes in the epithelium of the damaged crypts, but inclusion bodies were not seen. However, one cat had faintly granular, eosinophilic intranuclear masses similar to panleucopenia inclusion bodies [23,39,451 in the nuclei of three cells in otherwise normal jejunal crypts ( fig. 8).…”

“…Many parvoviruses have affinity for rapidly dividing cells [33,61,691 and this, in the case of panleucopenia, has served to explain [33,36] the selective damage to lymphatic and myeloid tissues and intestinal epithelium that is encountered both in the naturally occurring disease [22,23,27,28,381 and under experimental conditions when conventional cats are used [5, 12, 22, 32, 39, 51, 571.…”

Immunity to Poliomyelitis

“…With Dr. John Enders for two years, and later alone, experiments were carried out on a common, world-wide virus disease of cats. Independently and concurrently with Lawrence and Syverton (91), we found this infection had as its chief pathology, destructive lesions of various elements of the hematopoietic system (92,93). We called the disease panleucopenia.…”

Clinical and hematological сhanges in viral panleukopenia in cats

“…Еритроцити мають підвищену крихкість, а в сироватці спостерігається незначне посилення жовтяниці, що свідчить про збільшення середнього віку еритроцитів. Під час відновлення еритропоез починається лише після того, як реакція мієлоїдного кісткового мозку почне слабшати, можливо, внаслідок попереднього механічного скупчення кісткового мозку швидше зростаючими мієлобластами та мієлоцитами (Hammon & Enders, 1939;Kruse et al, 2010).…”