Red blood cell distribution width (RDW) has emerged as a diagnostic and prognostic marker in both human and veterinary medicine. In human medicine, RDW has been linked to a wide range of disorders. In veterinary medicine, however, its application has been explored more selectively. In dogs, elevated RDW has been associated with cardiac injury, inflammatory and/or immune-mediated conditions, pneumonia, endocrine disorders involving the thyroid and adrenal glands, and vascular problems. In cats, research has mostly focused on cardiac disease, and overall, RDW remains a relatively underexplored marker. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate RDW in relation to the anemia profile of cats infected with feline panleukopenia virus (FPV). For this purpose, the study population comprised 60 cats naturally infected with feline panleukopenia virus (FPV) and 10 healthy controls. Infected cats were stratified into anemic (n=30) and non-anemic (n=30) groups based on comprehensive erythroid parameters (RBC, HCT, HGB) in accordance with established reference intervals for the species. Red blood cell distribution width (RDW) did not differ significantly between groups (P=0.802). RDW failed to distinguish anemic from non-anemic individuals. This lack of discriminatory power was confirmed by ROC curve analysis, which demonstrated AUC values of 0.505 and 0.433 for the respective groups. We conclude that RDW lacks statistical significance as a differentiator between anemic and non-anemic states in cats with FPV infection. These findings highlight the need for larger-scale studies to determine whether RDW holds any clinically meaningful diagnostic or prognostic value in this context.
Parlatır et al. (Sat,) studied this question.