Regular visitors to this site might recall the feature earlier this year on Bud, the former stray with FIV (Feline Immunodeficiency Virus), the kitty equivalent of the human disease HIV. For over a year Bud had been on a "cocktail" of HIV medications to suppress the virus that had been actively causing problems for him since before the turn of the millenium. In May of this year, a viral load report had shown quite clearly that those drugs were no longer working for him. But the gravity of my disappointment then could not compare with the shock and elation that followed this September report.
Casting about vainly in the aftermath of May's bad news for some "Plan B" to keep Bud going, I had decided to fill the gap between what had been and what I could not yet imagine with a program of herbal therapy. I have never considered myself a fan of "alternative medicine" or homeopathy, but I am a pragmatist. If there were evidence that something worked, I'd try it. Perhaps, I had thought, I can hold the virus in check for a while, maybe even drop it some. So began a period of intensive research and reflection, followed, with some trepidation, by the therapy itself.
Now the young veterinary assistant calling from the vet's office was telling me that I hadn't held anything in check, I had blitzed it! I knew enough about FIV to know that "negative" didn't mean that the disease was gone; it meant that the virus had been suppressed below the limit of the assay to measure it. From May's count of 55,400 particles per ml. I had brought the count down to fewer than 50 per ml., something that isn't supposed to happen except with HIV drugs.
I report this result with hope, not with bravado. First of all, I have no idea how long this extraordinary result will hold up. For all I know, the virus, with its devious capacity to mutate and overcome anything put in its way, may already be multiplying and making a comeback. Then there is the ever present possibility of a toxic effect of some herb that has yet to reveal itself.
Still, herbs offer a new and largely untapped resource in the treatment of FIV. HIV sufferers have been experimenting with herbal and nonherbal supplements for many years, either because they found the side effects of HIV drugs too unpleasant or because, as with Bud, those drugs simply no longer worked well for them. Even among the few cat owners willing to try HIV drugs, the choices are far more limited than for people because most available ones are not effective against FIV. The human drug most often used to treat FIV, zidovudine (AZT), induces anemia in cats, as well as a variety of other unpleasant side effects. Herbal supplements (and some nonherbal supplements, as well) contain substances that, like HIV drugs, inhibit FIV at different points of its replication cycle. The so-called "triple-cocktail" of HIV drugs works precisely by targeting several points of the cycle, and in choosing which supplements to use, I tried to incorporate this same idea. However, since most research on the antiviral action of supplements has been done with HIV, not FIV, and in the laboratory, not in living beings, any result (including none at all), seemed possible.
