Treating and managing Cytauxzoonosis in feline patients

During an interview with dvm360 head of her upcoming lectures at the Veterinary Meeting & Expo (VMX), Lindsay Starkey, DVM, PhD, DACVM ( Parasitology), explained the importance of veterinarians being aware of Cytauxzoonosis, a tick-borne disease in cats, due to its shifting geographic range, early clinical signs professionals can be aware of, diagnostic changes, and more.

Below is a partial transcript

Lindsay Starkey, DVM, PhD, DACVM (Parasitology): Some of the early clinical signs you might see may not necessarily be intuitive, and so I'll tell students when I'm giving them a refresher during their fourth year of veterinary school. Respiratory distress, high, high fever, [and] some of these cats are just flat out lethargic, like they're dying in front of you, and we often see them present sometime in the spring or early summer. And again, that's latitudinally contingent. So the further north you are, the further into summer those cats, well, early summer, right? That's when those cats are likely going to present.

If you're further south, you could see them early spring, quite frankly, whenever those ticks start becoming active as the temperatures warm up, and so being in tune to that respiratory distress, high fever, those are going to be 2 year big indications. And then when that disease progresses, a little more, cats become anemic.