About the FIV Prognosis project

The FIV Prognosis Project is a collaborative project between the Retrovirus Research Laboratory in the Institute of Comparative Medicine and the Companion Animal Diagnostics Service , in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Glasgow.

the Project

Understanding the variability amongst FIV isolates is important to enable the development of vaccines that will afford protection against the entire repertoire of currently circulating viruses in the field. Furthermore, understanding how the virus evolves is important in determining the events which contribute to disease progression, as viruses isolated from cats before they develop clinical signs (early isolates) appear to have different properties from those isolated from cats in the terminal AIDS phase (late isolates). Detailed characterization of early and late isolates permit us to develop vaccines against early isolates of FIV, i.e. those that are most likely to be transmitted.

Participation in the project will not be onerous to either owners of FIV- infected cats or their veterinarians. The veterinarian will be contacted by project personnel upon registration and provided with information for the management of FIV-infected cats. Detailed guidelines from The European Advisory Board on Cat Diseases (ABCD) are available at http://www.abcd-vets.org and advise that infected cats are examined at 6 monthly intervals so that complete blood counts and biochemistry profiles may be assessed. This information will allow prompt and accurate identification of secondary illness which will be essential for veterinarians to successfully treat FIV infected cats.

Long Term Contribution to Feline Welfare

Although a vaccine to FIV is available commercially in the USA, Australia and New Zealand, there is no vaccine licensed for use in Europe at present. It is not known how effective an FIV vaccine may be in preventing transmission or whether vaccination may affect disease progression in cats infected after vaccination. An understanding of the predominant circulating UK FIV isolates and how these viruses evolve as disease progresses will assist the development of new and improved vaccines. In the long term, it is hoped that FIV vaccine studies may contribute to HIV vaccine development as well as improving the welfare of cats worldwide.