3.4 Coronaviridae
Alphacoronavirus 1 belongs to the Coronaviridae family
that includes strains infecting cats, dogs, pigs, the spotted hyena,
cheetahs and raccoon dogs (East et al., 2004; Pearks Wilkerson et al.,
2004; Vijaykrishna et al., 2007). The prevalence of feline coronavirus
RNA in the FPV-case libraries, 60.8% (14/23), was not dissimilar to
that in healthy controls (80.5% 26/36) (p = 0.4026, Figure 2) and its
read abundance was high in both groups (Table 1). The available spike
proteins identified were screened for the amino acid mutations M1058L
and S1060A, which are more commonly associated with systemic replication
of feline infectious peritonitis virus, which is an endogenous mutant
feline coronavirus that causes feline infectious peritonitis, a severe
multisystemic viral disease (Chang et al., 2012). None of the spike
proteins analysed contained these spike mutations, consistent with their
isolation from faecal samples.