Abstract
Feline panleukopenia (FPL) is a
severe, often fatal disease caused by feline parvovirus (FPV). How
infection with FPV might impact the composition of the entire eukaryotic
enteric virome in cats has not been characterized. We used
metatranscriptomic and viral particle enrichment metagenomic approaches
to characterize the enteric viromes of 23 cats naturally infected with
FPV (FPV-cases) and 36 age-matched healthy shelter cats (healthy
controls). Sequencing reads were detected from 11 mammalian infecting
viral families mostly belonging to Coronaviridae, Parvoviridaeand Astroviridae . Among the healthy control cats the most
abundant viruses were Feline coronavirus, Mamastrovirus 2 andCarnivore bocaparvovirus 3 (Feline bocavirus 1) with frequent
co-infections of all three. Feline chaphamaparvovirus was only detected
in healthy controls (6/36, 16.7%). Among the FPV-cases, in addition to
FPV, the most abundant viruses were Mamastrovirus 2 ,
Feline coronavirus and Carnivore bocaparvovirus 4 (Feline
bocaparvovirus 2). The latter and Feline bocaparvovirus 3 were detected
significantly more frequently in FPV-cases than in healthy controls.Feline calicivirus was present in a high proportion of FPV-cases
(11/23, 47.8%) compared to healthy controls (5/36, 13.9%, p=0.0067).
Feline kobuvirus infections were also common among FPV-cases (9/23,
39.1%) and were not detected in any healthy control cats
(p<0.0001). While abundant in both groups, astroviruses were
more frequently present in FPV-cases (19/23, 82.6%) than in healthy
controls (18/36, p=0.0142). The differences in eukaryotic virome
composition found in this study indicate that further investigations to
determine associations between enteric viral co-infections on clinical
disease severity in cats with FPL are warranted.