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Georgia Veterinary Scholar	Faculty Mentor
Kirsten Zwicker University of Georgia Class of 2003	Dr. Craig Greene

Comparison of the Performance of Eleven Commercially Available FIV Antibody and FeLV Antigen Screening Test Products

Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV) and Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) are contagious retroviruses causing major and often fatal health problems in cats worldwide. Since clinical signs of these viruses are related to immune suppression and are not pathognomonic for the virus, veterinarians must rely on screening tests to diagnose FeLV and FIV. Use of screening tests is also important in healthy animals since cats infected with either virus may shed virus for an extended period before developing clinical signs. Crucial decisions regarding the prognosis and management of feline patients are made based on these test results, therefore it is of utmost importance to know the sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of the test used. There are a variety of commercially available test kits, some of which are relatively new on the market. To assist veterinarians in choosing which test to use in their practice, the performance of eleven commonly used in-house test kits will be compared. Five hundred blood samples were taken from cats throughout Europe and the United States and each sample will be tested according to manufacturer's guidelines with the following eleven commercially available test kits: ONE-StepR FeLV from EVL, SpeedTMDuo FeLV/FIV from BioVeto Test Diagnostic Veterinaire, FasTestR FIV and FasTestR FeLV from MegaCor Diagnostik GmbH, SnapRCombo Plus FeLV/FIV, PetChekR FeLV, and PetChekRPlus Anti-FIV from IDEXX Laboratories Inc., and WitnessTM FeLV, WitnessTM FIV, ViraCHEKR FIV, and ViraCHEKR FeLV from Synbiotics Europe. Sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of each test will be calculated by comparing test results to Western immunoblot assay results for FIV and virus isolation and immunofluorescence assay results for FeLV.