Table 1.
Gender distribution, age and length of stay of the 79 cats in the three shelters.
Fig 1.
Amyloidosis, cat, fluorescence-immunohistochemistry for AA-amyloidosis.
Tissue were stained with Thioflavine S (ThioS) to confirm the presence of amyloidogenic aggregates [a, d, g, left column, ThioS in green, 4’,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) in blue] and with an IgG derived from mice immunized with Qβ-AA peptide vaccine (b, e, h, middle column, IgG in red). A co-localization staining of ThioS and IgG (c, f, i, right column, merge) was generated to authenticate the specificity of the IgGs. a, b, c) Liver. d, e, f) Kidney. g, h, i) Spleen.
Table 2.
Histological score of liver, spleen, and kidney samples positive to Congo red staining and showing birefringence under polarized light microscopy in in 79 cats.
Fig 2.
Congo red stain. a) Liver. A diffuse moderate amount of red stained amyloid (arrows) displaces the hepatocellular cords, sometimes isolating the hepatocytes. Inset: apple-green birefringence under polarized light. b) Spleen. Red stained amorphous material (amyloid, asterisks) is observed in the interstitium and around arteries (arrows). Inset: apple-green birefringence under polarized light. c) Kidney. The glomerular tuft is expanded by a large amount of Congo red-stained amorphous material (asterisk) consistent with amyloid, which is also present around a proximal arteriole (arrowhead) and along the Bowman’s capsule (arrows). Insets: Apple-green birefringence under polarized light is evident in a glomerulus (upper inset) and around tubules (lower inset). Histologic pictures of AA-amyloidosis-negative liver, spleen, and kidney is reported in S3 Fig.
Fig 3.
Representative western blot analysis of bile samples with anti-SAA1 polyclonal antibody.
Lane 1 and 6: pre-stained molecular weight markers; lane 2–5: positive samples; lane 7–10: negative samples.
Fig 4.
Box and whisker plot of Disease Duration Index in cats with and without AA-amyloidosis (n = 20, all belonging to shelter C).