Clinical investigation of doxorubicin, daunomycin, and 6-thioguanine in normal cats.

Cats frequently develop a variety of spontaneous hemolymphatic noeplasias. Long-term remissions in the nonlymphatic leukemic cat are difficult to obtain; therefore, more successful chemotherapeutic agents are sought for disease control. The purpose in the present study is to describe the clinical investigation of 3 antineoplastic drugs given to 23 normal cats. The cats tolerated doxorubican given at the dose level of 30 mg/m2 of body surface area once every 3 weeks; daunomycin, 15 to 30 mg/m2 once every 3 weeks; and 6-thioguanine, 25 mg/m2 for 5 days every 20 to 30 days.

Treatment of feline myelogenous leukemia: four case reports.

Of 4 cats with myelogenous leukemia, 3 had the neutrophilic type and 1 had the basophilic type. Partial remission was achieved with chemotherapy in 2 of the cats. Their survival times, however, were 77 and 31 days from time of diagnosis. The other 2 cats did not respond to treatment and died 16 days from time of diagnosis.

Monocytic leukemia in three cats.

Of 3 cats with monocytic leukemia, 1 responded favorably to treatment with cytosine arabinoside. With supportive therapy, it lived 78 days from the time of diagnosis, at which time it developed dyspnea and signs of toxicosis and died. The other 2 cats did not respond to treatment and died 4 and 16 days from time of diagnosis. Prior to death, they were bleeding from injection sites, and their blood had greater than 200,000 WBC/mm3. Necropsy of those 2 cats revealed extensive perivascular hemorrhagic infarcts within the cerebellum, medulla, and cerebrum.

Feline brain abscesses due to Cladosporium trichoides.

Cladosporium trichoides was isolated from brain abscesses of two cats. No obvious route of entry was found in either case. The brain was the only organ cultured. No other significant lesions were observed during necropsy. These are the first reported cases of such infection in animals.

Chemoimmunotherapy for canine lymphosarcoma.

Thirty-two dogs with naturally occurring multicentric lymphosarcoma were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups. One half of the animals received combination chemotherapy plus vitamin injections (controls) while the other half received indentical chemotherapy plus injections of chemically-modified tumor cell extract in Freund's complete adjuvant (vaccinates). Clinical staging revealed no bias between groups but showed that prognosis could be closely correlated with the severity of disease at initial presentation. Twenty dogs (62%), including 11 vaccinates and 9 controls, responded favorably to chemotherapy and were evaluated for length of first remission and total survival time. Both parameters were significantly longer in vaccinated dogs than in controls. These data suggest that immunological stimulation may be a helpful adjunct to conventional therapy in selected types of cancer when immunological principles are observed.