Breaking Barriers in Feline Health: Holistic Care and FIP (Feline Infectious Peritonitis) Breakthroughs | The Feline Wellness Summit with Dr. Lisa Fiorenza

 Welcome to the cat dad show. My name is Scott Colby, and I'm going to share with you a clip of my interview with Dr. Lisa Fiorenza. She has her doctorate in veterinary medicine from Cornell university. And in this clip, I asked her, what is feline infectious Periotonitis, which is also known as FIP. How is it diagnosed?

And I asked her also her approach to treating it. This is a clip of an interview I did with Dr. Lisa as part of my feline wellness summit. If you would like to listen to the entire interview with Dr. Lisa, as well as interviews, With 20 other feline wellness experts, just go to feline wellness summit.com and you can grab a free ticket For now.

Enjoy this clip with Dr. Lisa.

Sure, so feline infectious peritonitis or FIP is a, um, it is caused by a coronavirus of cats and it's exclusively cats. It's not contagious to people or dogs or really other pets. So it's just primarily a cat disease. And in the majority of cats, it really doesn't do much.

It can be a little cold or a little stomach upset and then they're totally fine. In a very small percentage for. A mixture of reasons. Some we don't necessarily know for sure, but we, um, we believe there's a genetic predisposition and usually some kind of stress trigger, um, but for whatever reasons in that small percentage, it can transform into something very deadly, which is what we call FIP or Feline Infectious Peritonitis.

Um, it, I, nowadays, Because there are some similarities. I do kind of put it in the framework of COVID for people because it's similar in that the majority are fine and the small percentage get extremely sick. So I think that kind of helps people to put it into some kind of context, but always with the caveat that no, it's not the same.

It's not contagious to people. You don't have to be afraid of your cat if it's diagnosed with FIP.

Diagnosing and Treating FIP

Just for that kind of frame of reference, um, it can be very difficult to diagnose. It's honestly a very hard diagnosis to make. I get a lot of people come in for second or third opinion, sometimes even more than that, because they're Vet isn't sure, they didn't know how to treat FIP, they weren't sure of the diagnosis, um, their vet didn't know how to diagnose it, or they just, you know, the pet owners found it on the internet and were worried that that could be what their cat was suffering from.

ch come out. I believe it was: 2018

Um, interestingly, one of the most popular treatments now because it works very well is something called GS. And that is, it's just the molecule name, the chemical name of the drug. It's actually the sister drug to remdesivir that is used for treatment of COVID in humans. Um, and we can actually use remdesivir.

It's just. There's better ways. The GS is actually better because it tends to be cheaper. It tends to be easier to access and it can be given by mouth. Um, but that was one of the first cures that we found for, uh, for FIP and it's still our best treatment in my opinion. Um, it's been quite a, quite the story, quite the wild ride.

ers came out, like I said, in: 2018

Without going through any kind of veterinarian, um, any kind of legal, uh, avenues. It was the only way that they could treat their cats and save their cats. Uh, unfortunately, the drug companies that owned the patents on the molecules did not want to have it, um, used. They didn't want to get it FDA approved for cats.

through this network. And in: 2020

And what do you think? And I was like, well, I don't know. You know, I don't know much about it. It's definitely sounds sketchy. Um, I don't really know if it's a good idea, but. Do we have any other choices? Not really.

So

I started looking into it, and unfortunately, that patient did progress pretty rapidly, and he passed away, but he was my way into the community, and since then, I've been able to treat, um, treat.

I've lost count. It's got to be somewhere in the fifties or so, um, somewhere north of 50 cats with this disease. And I believe I've only lost about two in in that 50. So we've had an incredibly high success rate. We know that after the first week or two of treatment, the success rate is well over 90%. So these cats do wonderfully.

And now that the drug is legally available, it's really just about getting the word out to the veterinarians who don't know yet to try to get treatment into the hands of more pet owners.

Yeah, amazing story there and kudos to you for kind of doing your due diligence and getting involved in that community so you could treat these cats, you know, as quickly as possible.

I know you said it's it can be difficult to diagnose. How would a pet owner, a cat owner, uh, you know, know that there may be something wrong to this magnitude where their cat may have F. I. P.