Paraneoplastic alopecia in cats

In this interview discussing her Fetch dvm360 conference session Kitty Conundrums: Dermatologic CATastrophies, Joya Griffin, DVM, DACVD, talks about paraneoplastic alopecia—a unique disease to cats. Griffin discusses signs of the disease, as well as diagnostics and treatment for underlying diseases, as paraneoplastic alopecia is often an indicator of an internal disease.

Below is a partial transcript, lightly edited for clarity

Joya Griffin, DVM, DACVD: So one of the kind of coolest disease processes—maybe not the coolest for the cat—is paraneoplastic alopecia. And this is really a disease that is very specific to the cat, there really aren't any human or dog corollaries to this disease, and when you see it, once you see it, you will recognize it again. But these cats have almost completely bald areas on their skin. That alopecia is pretty striking. It goes from fairly normal hair to completely smooth, almost shiny alopecia.

And in some of the cases, the hair at the edges will just sort of pull out, like it toughs out and peels away. And these cases sometimes can have thin skin as well and really cats cannot create that extreme level of alopecia. And in general, cats don't really have alopecic diseases. They're fairly rare in cats, unless it's traumatic alopecia. So, whenever I see this, I know right away that I need to look for internal disease, either with CBC chemistry panel, abdominal ultrasounds, x-rays to try to determine the cause of it, and then we are also doing biopsies to confirm the diagnosis as well.

Unfortunately, treatment for paraneoplastic alopecia is really aimed at trying to control the internal disease, which often is something that's devastating, so we don't always have great options for those cases but I think diagnosing them quickly will help to provide some level of relief, and, you know, symptomatic treatment for those patients, if we can recognize that the skin is related to something going on internally.