Feline inflammatory bowel disease: a review

Abstract

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), while a popular diagnosis, may not occur as commonly as it is diagnosed. It is a diagnosis of exclusion, meaning that it is important to eliminate diseases that mimick it. Dietary intolerance or allergy in particular, can have the same clinical and histologic appearance as IBD. Likewise, well-differentiated alimentary lymphosarcoma can also be confused with it. Intestinal biopsies are useful, but must be taken carefully and then evaluated by someone with interest and expertise in alimentary tract pathology. Therefore, it behoves the clinician to carefully consider the diagnosis instead of starting multiple drug therapy in a cavalier fashion. Well constructed dietary therapy can often be beneficial for both dietary problems and IBD.

Fig 1.

(a) A photomicrograph of an endoscopic biopsy of duodenal mucosa. This sample principally contains villi; therefore, it is inadequate for evaluating the duodenal mucosa. Compare this section of tissue to that in Fig 1b. (b) A photomicrograph of an endoscopic biopsy of duodenal mucosa. In contrast to Fig 1a, this tissue sample represents the full thickness of the intestinal mucosa, all aspects of the mucosa being available for examination. Notice also that the orientation of the tissue section allows the histopathologist to evaluate for evidence of villus blunting or collapse. The smooth lower border shows that this piece of tissue was ‘peeled’ off the submucosa. This particular section of tissue has a marked infiltrate of lymphocytes, and it is difficult to determine whether this represents marked lymphocytic inflammatory bowel disease or well-differentiated lymphosarcoma. Hematoxylin and eosin stain, photographed at an original magnification of × 100.