Prevalence of feline blood types in the Lisbon region of Portugal

The present 12-year retrospective study was undertaken to determine the distribution offeline blood types in purebred and non-purebred cats in the Lisbon area of Portugal.Samples were obtained between March 1997 and March 2009 at the Technical University ofLisbon Veterinary Teaching Hospital (FMV-UTL), several veterinary clinics in the Lisbon areaand at the FMV-UTL Veterinary Blood Bank. Blood was collected from 535 cats (491 non-purebred and 44 purebred cats) of both genders (177 males, 129 females and 229 notspecified) and various ages (5 months to 21 years of age). From 1997 to 2007, the bloodtype of each cat was determined by the classical agglutination assay using Triticum vulgaris lectin and serum obtained from type-B cats. From 2008 to 2009, samples were typed usingDME VET A+B® test kit. The prevalence of type-A, type-B and type-AB blood types in thissurvey was 97.57% (n=522), 2.06% (n=11) and 0.37% (n=2), respectively. Purebred catsincluded 2 Norwegian Forest cats, 11 Persian cats and 31 Siamese cats. The first twobreeds had 100% prevalence of type-A blood type while the Siamese cats were 93.55%(n=29) type-A and 6.45% (n=2) type-B. Of the 491 non-purebred cats typed, 97.56%(n=479) were type-A, 2.04% (n=10) were type-B and 0.41% (n=2) were type-AB. This studyshowed a high prevalence of cats with type-A blood and a low frequency of type-B and type-AB in Lisbon. The absence of a blood group other than type-A in Persian and NorwegianForest cats may be explained by the low number of samples of these breeds in this study.Despite what has been reported about Siamese cats in other regions of the world, two Siamese cats from Lisbon region were type-B.