Cats and Leukemia

A recent discovery that cats have a natural defense system against leukemia may direct emphasis to an entirely new area of human cancer treatment called immunotherapy, a microbiologist at the School of Public Health said yesterday.

Myron E. Essex, assistant professor of Microbiology, said he is a member of a research team that has discovered that of a number of cats naturally exposed to leukemia, only a small group actually developed the disease.

Essex said cats with a normal level of antigens have a high level of immunity to leukemia.

Of a household of 51 cats exposed to leukemia in a Connecticut farmhouse, only eight developed the disease, Essex said. He said the other 43 cats were unaffected.

The significance of the discovery for human cancer research, Essex said, is that human beings may have similar defense mechanisms. It is possible that humans are all exposed to carcinogenic agents, but that only those with an abnormally low level of immunity get the disease, Essex added.

If this is true, a helpful area for future cancer research may be to develop immunotherapy for humans, Essex said.

The current treatments of leukema are through drug therapy and radiation treatment.