Prevalence of Feline Leukemia Virus and Feline Immunodeficiency Virus in Patients from Veterinary Centers in Three Colombian Cities

Abstract

In Colombia, research on Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV) and Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) is incipient, despite being the viruses of greatest clinical and epidemiological importance in domestic cats, presenting a worldwide distribution but with very variable prevalence. To determine the molecular prevalence of FeLV and FIV and their associated factors in domestic cats treated in veterinary centers in three Colombian cities. A cross-sectional study with 1,708 felines evaluated for FeLV and 1,646 for FIV by qPCR was performed, following the ethical regulations for protection and research with animals. To guarantee methodological quality, selection and information bias control and confusion analysis with multivariate regression were performed. The prevalence of each virus was determined with its 95% confidence interval, statistically significant differences were identified using Chi-square test and adjusted odds ratios were calculated to determine the strength of the association in SPSS 29.0. The prevalence of FeLV was 11.8%, which presented a statistical difference with breed and age group, being higher in mixed breed (13.2%) and young adults (17.3%). The prevalence of FIV was 4.7% and this presented statistically significant differences according to breed, sex and age, being higher in mixed breed (5.1%), males (6.6%) and Seniors (9.1%). Two Colombian studies published on these viruses were carried out with ELISA or applying PCR to a small number of symptomatic animals, for this reason, this is the first study that shows a robust approximation of the molecular prevalence of these viruses in a passive epidemiological surveillance program. A high prevalence of both viruses was found and the subgroups with the highest occurrence of infection were identified. This is decisive to prioritize groups in clinical care, active epidemiological surveillance programs and etiological investigations.