Myeloproliferative disease in the dog and cat: definition, aetiology and classification

Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine, Cambridge.

The term myeloproliferative disease may be applied to all the non-lymphoid dysplastic and neoplastic conditions arising from the haematopoietic stem cell or its progeny. Thus the chronic and acute myeloid leukaemias, thrombocythaemia, megakaryocytic myelosis, myelofibrosis, the myelodysplastic syndromes and some cases of aplastic anaemia may be viewed as variants of a single disease process. This view is useful in explaining the common occurrence of mixed forms of disease or interconversions between the myeloproliferative diseases. This variability is a consequence of the development of all the haematopoietic lineages from a single class of haematopoietic stem cell by progressive differentiation. The aetiology of the myeloproliferative diseases in the domestic animals is uncertain but feline leukaemia virus infection has been implicated in the cat. These conditions may be classified as aplastic anaemia, as preleukaemic dysplastic conditions with variable cytopenias and morphological abnormalities of blood cells, as smouldering leukaemias, or as leukaemias with a frankly leukaemic blood or bone marrow.