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. 2023 Aug 25;15(9):1815.
doi: 10.3390/v15091815.

Chitinase-1 Activity in Serum of Cats with FIP

Angelica Stranieri  1 , Gabriela Ávila Morales  1 , Laura Brusasco  1 , Saverio Paltrinieri  1
Affiliations

Chitinase-1 Activity in Serum of Cats with FIP

Angelica Stranieri et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

Background: Chitotriosidase (chitinase 1 or CHIT1) is secreted by activated macrophages. Macrophages are involved in the pathogenesis of feline infectious peritonitis (FIP). No reports on CHIT1 activity in cats with FIP are available.

Objective: To preliminarily investigate the possible changes in serum CHIT1 activity in cats with FIP.

Methods: CHIT1 activity was measured in serum samples from clinically healthy cats (n = 17), cats with FIP (n = 19) and cats with diseases potentially characterized by macrophage activation (n = 20), after a preliminary assessment of the imprecision and linearity of the method.

Results: The highest CHIT1 activity was found in cats with FIP, followed by sick cats and clinically healthy cats. The magnitude of the differences between groups was higher than the intra- and inter-assay imprecision of the method (<5% and >57%, respectively). Based on receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, CHIT1 may differentiate sick from clinically healthy cats and, to a lesser extent, cats with FIP from cats without FIP.

Conclusions: CHIT1 activity may identify sick cats and, within the appropriate clinical context, cats with FIP, although larger and more standardized studies, coupled with additional information on analytical performances of the method, are required to fully explore the diagnostic or prognostic potential of this test for FIP.

Keywords: CHIT1; feline infectious peritonitis; inflammation; macrophages.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Distribution of results recorded in session 1 (A,C) or 2 (B,D) in the different groups of cats or in cats grouped according to the type of FIP. The boxes indicate the I-III interquartile range (IQR); horizontal lines indicate the median value. Vertical lines extend until the last value not classifiable as an outlier. Black circles indicate the results not classifiable as outliers; gray circles and open circles indicate, respectively, the near outliers (values higher than the III quartile + 1.5 × IQR) and the far outliers (values higher than the III quartile + 3.0 × IQR). Far outliers exceeding the scalebar are reported on the top of each graph.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves of chitinase 1 (CHIT1) designed to differentiate sick from healthy cats ((a) = session 1; (b) = session 2) or FIP cats from cats without FIP ((c) = session 1; (d) = session 2). The gray line indicates the line of no discrimination; TPF = true positive frequency; FPF = false positive frequency.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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