Naturally FIV-infected cats exhibit a higher risk of age-related visuospatial working memory impairment compared with cats without FIV disease

Abstract

Visuospatial working memory performance was examined in a cohort of twenty naturally infected cats with feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) and twenty uninfected controls. We used a simple object permanence task where cats needed to recall the encoded spatial information from their working memory after a limited period to locate the indicated container. After the exclusion criteria, the cats were grouped based on their age and FIV status and the total number of correct choices was recorded for each participant. The groups were then compared with each other on the basis of median group performance to evaluate any notable difference in the median number of correct choices between groups. Results of the present study revealed a significant difference in median group performance between the young and the old FIV-infected group (P = 0.002) as well as the young FIV-negative compared with the old FIV-negative group (P = 0.003). Similarly, the old FIV-negative group performed better than the old FIV-positive group (P = 0.048). Nevertheless, the young FIV-positive and -negative cats did not appear to be any different in their median group performance (P = 0.29). Collectively, these findings suggest that FIV infection is associated with an age-related decrement in visuospatial working memory efficiency of naturally infected cats. However, an evaluation of different cognitive domains in a larger study population is needed to see whether FIV infection is likely to accelerate age-related cognitive impairments in naturally FIV-infected cats or not.