Feline leukemia and feline immunodeficiency virus in Canada — A reply
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Dear Editor, Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the letter from Drs. Doornenbal, Ingwersen, and Cloutier regarding our recent review article on feline retroviruses “Feline leukemia and feline immunodeficiency virus in Canada: Recommendations for testing and management” ( Can Vet J 2011;52:849–855). We appreciate their interest in the topic. As is apparent, we consider many of the same issues important in feline health care: the impact of FIV infection-associated morbidity, the need for better FIV prevention and therapy, and the need for better tests. However, we differ in our interpretation of available information on FIV vaccine efficacy. As cited by Doornenbal et al. and us, there are several studies from researchers collaborating with the vaccine manufacturer showing good efficacy of the licensed FIV vaccine against different viral clades, and there is only one study from researchers unaffiliated with the vaccine manufacturer showing lack of efficacy. These highly discrepant findings are difficult to interpret in the context of a virus that is constantly evolving and recombining, and for which laboratory strains can differ markedly from field strains. Furthermore, the amount of virus and the route of inoculation that represent a “natural challenge” versus a challenge in a laboratory setting are not clear. Of paramount importance when considering whether to vaccinate cats against FIV remains the inability to distinguish vaccinated from infected cats by antibody ELISA. The antibody ELISA is the mainstay of diagnosis, and currently an alternate test of similar sensitivity and specificity is not available. Under conditions encountered by rescue groups and humane societies, a cat testing positive for FIV antibody is assumed to be infected and may be euthanized, even though the test result may be a result of vaccination and not natural infection. Finally, the currently available FIV vaccine is an adjuvanted product. Adjuvanted vaccines are more likely to induce inflammation, which in turn may lead to development of tumors. Hence, we cannot recommend an adjuvanted vaccine with an extremely variable reported efficacy and which interferes with the mainstay of testing. Prevention of FIV infection with a consistently effective vaccine remains a highly desirable goal, and we welcome additional evidence from independent researchers showing efficacy under field conditions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".