Hematopoiesis in asymptomatic cats infected with feline immunodeficiency
virus
ML Linenberger, GH Shelton, MT Persik and JL Abkowitz
Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle 98195.
Anemia and neutropenia often develop in cats that are infected with the
feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), a lentivirus biologically similar to
the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). To assess the role of FIV in the
pathogenesis of these abnormalities, marrow culture studies were performed
on nine asymptomatic, hematologically normal cats that were chronically
infected with FIV. In these experiments, the frequencies of
granulocyte/macrophage progenitors (CFU-GM) and early and late erythroid
progenitors (CFU-E and BFU-E, respectively) were equivalent to progenitor
frequencies in simultaneously studied uninfected control cats. Asymptomatic
FIV infection was not associated with a change in the cell-cycle kinetics
of CFU-E, BFU-E, or CFU-GM, nor was there an alteration in the
dose-response of BFU-E or CFU-GM to hematopoietic growth factors present in
fibroblast-derived conditioned medium. Sera from FIV-infected cats
supported progenitor growth in vitro as well as normal cat sera.
Furthermore, there was no evidence that these sera contained
complement-fixing antibodies that recognized hematopoietic progenitors.
Therefore, these data show that the in vitro behavior of hematopoietic
progenitors is not affected by FIV infection alone, and they are in
agreement with recent evidence that human progenitors are not a major
target of HIV infection. It is likely that factors associated with
progressive immunodeficiency, opportunistic infections, nutritional
deficiencies, or malignancies play significant roles in the cytopenias that
develop during the symptomatic disease induced by FIV, and by analogy, HIV.
Prospective marrow culture studies of FIV-infected cats that develop
hematologic abnormalities should provide a valuable animal model of
acquired immunodeficiency syndrome-associated hematologic disorders.
Volume 78,
Issue 8,
pp. 1963-1968,
10/15/1991
Copyright © 1991 by The American Society of Hematology
