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T'aint necessarily so. It could be a false positive if their mother nursed them and they are exhibiting maternal antibodies only. I will try to find the link: I am pretty sure Cornell and some other link cover this. They are in your home now, so you can treat it differently than the quick triage that must be done in a shelter. Was their mother also available and tested positive? Did they nurse?Originally Posted by sheltieluver
Even if they are positive some weeks from now, though, you could try keeping them or adopting out to FIV+ homes. I realize that these are both very hard to do.
Also, in kittens, negatives can be false and positives can be false, too! One of the reasons I stopped doing cat rescue!
Found link:
Feline Immunodeficiency Virus
- Since false-positive results may occur, veterinarians recommend that positive results be confirmed using a test with a different format.
- Infected mother cats transfer FIV antibodies to nursing kittens, so kittens born to infected mothers may receive positive test results for several months after birth. However, few of these kittens actually are or will become infected. To clarify their infection status, kittens younger than six months of age receiving positive results should be retested at 60-day intervals until they are at least six months old.
Negative results
- A negative test result indicates that antibodies directed against FIV have not been detected, and, in most cases, this implies that the cat is not infected. Nevertheless, it takes eight to 12 weeks after infection (and sometimes even longer) before detectable levels of antibody appear, so if the test is performed during this interval, inaccurate results might be obtained. Therefore, antibody-negative cats with either an unknown or a known exposure to FIV-infected cats-such as through the bite of an unknown cat-should be retested a minimum of 60 days after their most recent exposure in order to allow adequate time for development of antibodies.
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