The differences in eukaryotic virome composition revealed here indicate that further investigations are warranted to determine associations between enteric viral coāinfections on clinical disease severity in cats with FPL.
Abstract Feline panleukopenia (FPL) is a severe, often fatal disease caused by feline panleukopenia virus (FPV). How infection with FPV might impact the composition of the entire eukaryotic enteric virome in cats has not been characterized. We used metaātranscriptomic and viral particle enrichment metagenomic approaches to characterize the enteric viromes of 23 cats naturally infected with FPV (FPVācases) and 36 ageāmatched healthy shelter cats (healthy controls). Sequencing reads from mammalian infecting viral families largely belonged to the Coronaviridae, Parvoviridae and Astroviridae. The most abundant viruses among the healthy control cats were feline coronavirus, Mamastrovirus 2 and Carnivore bocaparvovirus 3 (feline bocavirus), with frequent coinfections of all three. Feline chaphamaparvovirus was only detected in healthy controls (6 out of 36, 16.7%). Among the FPVācases, in addition to FPV, the most abundant viruses were Mamastrovirus 2, feline coronavirus and C. bocaparvovirus 4 (feline bocaparvovirus 2). The latter and feline bocaparvovirus 3 were detected significantly more frequently in FPVācases than in healthy controls. Feline calicivirus was present in a higher proportion of FPVācases (11 out of 23, 47.8%) compared to healthy controls (5 out of 36, 13.9%, p = 0.0067). Feline kobuvirus infections were also common among FPVācases (9 out of 23, 39.1%) and were not detected in any healthy controls (p < .0001). While abundant in both groups, astroviruses were more frequently present in FPVācases (19 out of 23, 82.6%) than in healthy controls (18 out of 36, p = .0142). The differences in eukaryotic virome composition revealed here indicate that further investigations are warranted to determine associations between enteric viral coāinfections on clinical disease severity in cats with FPL.