There is a benign syndrome that usually appears in English bulldogs and is often confused with canine cancer, specifically leukemia. It’s called polyclonal B-cell lymphocytosis, and it causes many dogs to be unnecessarily treated or even euthanized for it. Now a study has shown that this misdiagnosis is very common and urges veterinarians to take it into account.
The research, which has been published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine, has analyzed 84 cases of English bulldogs that had high levels of B cells in their blood, a symptom that also occurs in leukemia. To do this, they analyzed the sera of the dogs and evaluated the types of antibodies they had produced, and whether the B cells were identical or not, because if they were, it would indicate that they come from the same cell and that they are probably cancerous.
“This important finding demonstrates that we should not assume that a high B cell count always indicates cancer in English bulldogs,” Janet Patterson-Kane
The results showed that 70% of the dogs did not have cancer; furthermore, those who developed the benign syndrome tended to be young, only one or two years old. Three quarters of them were male and more than half had an enlarged spleen, most had hyperglobulinemia – excess globulins in the blood – and an excess of antibodies in the blood circulation.
Misdiagnosis in dogs can be avoided
“This important finding demonstrates that we should not assume that a high B cell count always indicates cancer in English bulldogs,” said Janet Patterson-Kane, chief scientific officer of the Morris Animal Foundation and one of the study’s authors. This information can keep veterinarians from misdiagnosing and could help save many canine lives.
The researchers are also looking into whether this syndrome could also occur in other dog breeds, looking for genetic mutations that could lead to this syndrome. In addition, they almost certainly believe that this syndrome has an underlying genetic cause, so it does not appear to have a malignant clinical course.
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