Not sure statistically how often it happens, but I know it can, because it happened to me. Tested mom cat (negative) and sickly 7 week old runt (positive) with the in-house Elisa snap test. Four other littermates were separated from mom and the runt and were tested at 8 weeks (all negative). At 14 weeks one of the negatives came down with a fever, we ran the Elisa test again and he was positive. He apparently was very recently infected when we tested him the first time, and thus didn't yet have enough of the antibodies? or is it antigens? circulating in his blood stream for the test to detect. It is important to retest cats that test positive as well, as they may fight off the disease and test negative at a later date. In order to give the virus time to clear out or settle in, you should wait at least 120 days from last exposure to test again. And, it is best to use the IFA test the second time. I understand it is better at picking up persistent infection which has settled in the bone marrow. I suspect that had we IFA tested the feral momma kitty, we may have found that she actually was infected. Instead, when we got that first negative we had her spayed and released. Of course, their is also a chance that she really was negative, the kittens could have been infected by another stray...
Beth On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 12:55 AM, Reyna Castano <[email protected]> wrote: > If a cat tests negative for feline leukemia why does the vet recommend a > second test in two months? > What are the possibilities of the same cat testing positive the second time? > > Reyna > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Felvtalk mailing list > [email protected] > http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org > _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list [email protected] http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
