Possible relationships between canine hematopoietic neoplasia, other malignancies and immune mediated diseases

In the last ten years few retroviruses have been isolated. The reasons for this lack of new discoveries are obvious, most retroviral investigations have been directed to HIV, HTLVI and HTLVII research with little research attention given to other species that may have retroviral infections, such as the dog. The domesticated dog is particularly important to investigate because they live in close proximity to human beings and have done so for at least the last 14 thousand years (1). This report gives relationships between canine hematopoietic, other neoplasia and immune mediated diseases in two families of inbred dogs that possibly were also infected with a yet to be fully described retrovirus. These findings should lead to a renewed interest in studying retroviral infections in dogs. The heterospecies relationship of retroviral infections closely related to human AIDS virus is of obvious scientific importance.