HISTORY OF FELINE LEUKEMIA RESOURCE PAGE - DR. JOHN RAYMOND BAKER,DC

The Name "Feline Leukemia Virus" is a misnomer that , unfortunately, has stuck. FeLV until very recently was one of the most common reasons for death in cats. FeLV is NOT leukemia, but leukemia was one of the first diseases associated with the virus, and thus, the name was applied. By the time it was discovered that this actually was a virus and not leukemia, the term had already stuck and was in popular use.

According to one article, FeLV was first described in a "cluster" of cats with lymphosarcoma in 1964. As diseases go, this is a very young disease from the standpoint of description. As I write this, the year is 2008 (in a few days it will be 2009), so, the disease has only been known as FeLV for around forty five years. It was discovered by Oswald Jarrett and others.

I would advocate strongly, that you read this article, from which the above information was taken. If it is not accessible at the above link, then
CLICK HERE. From this article, we read :
"In 1969, Jarrett et al. (19, 21) discovered that FeLV could infect cat, human, and canine tissue culture cells and Rickard et al. (29) reported that Mitchell and coworkers showed that FeLV could cause LSA when injected into newborn puppies. " (Note "LSA" indicates lymphosarcoma)
It is important to note though, there is no evidence at this time that
a feline, infected with lymphosarcoma, caused by FeLV, can transmit the
diseases to man , i.e. no transspecies transmission from feline to human.

The article cited, while truly a pioneering and important work, is, as of this general date of writing, almost thirty three years old (as of 2009). The question becomes, in over three decades, what have we learned about
FeLV , and are we closer to solving this problem?

Technically, the Feline Leukemia Virus is a "retrovirus", meaning, it is RNA based, not DNA based. Physiologically, as a retrovirus, it shares common traits with another, more widely known virus, the HIV or Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or the virus which is alleged to cause AIDS (Aquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome). Not everyone believes that the HIV virus causes AIDS, hence the "alleged" term.

From the standpoint of what FeLV does to a cat infected with it, if the immune system cannot control it, the poor victim, near the end, in fact does look very much like an AIDS patient. My poor Dumplin did there at the end. Also, like AIDS, FeLV infected cats can suffer from the development of opportunistic cancers. In the case of cats, lymphosarcoma (what Dumplin developed) is one of the most common.
In fact, it acts so much like human HIV, that some researchers have tried the HIV drug, AZT against FeLV, but with little success. As we have seen
from HIV/AIDS, retroviruses are horrible little creatures, that are capable of mutating, and frustrating attempts to kill them.

Thus, if your cat develops both cancer such as lymphosarcoma, and also the feline leukemia, it is much harder to try to treat. The term "leukemia" means a "cancer of the blood". Leukemia, as a distinct pathology, involves the proliferation of cancerous cells in the bone marrow.

The most common form of leukemia seen in cats and dogs is lymphocytic leukemia, because of the involvement of lymphocytes, which are a type of white blood cell. Lymphocytic leukemia can be further broken down into acute (sudden onset) and chronic (long term ) types.

Since this page is mainly about the history, I will forego further discussions for the appropriate pages.

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