🧇 Hi there! I am coming in with a question about misinformation and specific diagnoses. I recently had a distant brush with FIP (a family friend’s cat suddenly passed away). It was sad and scary, and I ended up going in search of more info. Good old Google gave me a pretty wild range of answers, especially in regards to how long after virus exposure it takes FIP to appear and how common it is in sibling groups. It made me curious, is there a good way for a casual searcher to tell what conflicting info stems from people misunderstanding their vets and what comes from real gaps in the research? And specifically with FIP, do you have any sources that give a good explanation of it?
gettingvetted here.
In general, when researching a veterinary topic, you will be looking for either a neutral source, or an expert source.
A neutral source would be something like PetMD (not intended for use to self-diagnose any pets, but a great starting point for learning more about a particular diagnosis) or honestly Wikipedia.
An expert source would be a website like Cornell vet school’s Center for Feline Health or another vet school website like UCDavis. VCA (a corporate chain of vet clinics in the US) also has a lot of reader-friendly resources on a variety of topics. The Veterinary Information Network (VIN) is mostly a subscription service for veterinarians to read and share information, but it too has a variety of client-friendly handouts for vets to use with their clients and these be accessed without a subscription. The Merck Manual is mostly for veterinary professionals but does have a client-facing version of popular topics. The Winn Feline Foundation and Maddie’s Fund have a variety of client-friendly resources. Many/most of the national/international veterinary associations like AVMA, AAHA, AAFP, AAEP, WSAVA, BSAVA, etc and the associations of board-certified veterinary specialists in the US like DACVN, DACVIM, ACVS, etc have a lot of information that may or may not be reader-friendly if you are not a vet. Finally there are, of course, plenty of peer-reviewed journals to peruse but these usually use very complicated/”expert” language and can be difficult to parse through as far as study parameters and and strength of the results.
What you wouldn’t want is a website that is not written by a vet or other researcher with an advanced degree in a relevant topic (for example, there is a popular dog food opinion site written by a human dentist), a resource that goes against what the majority of other experts are saying (an Andrew Wakefield type), or a resource that says “vets don’t learn about xyz topic in school/vets don’t know about xyz treatment/vets don’t want you to know about xyz/vets only want to take your money/my vet told me this and they were wrong,” etc.
As far as resources I recommend on the topic of FIP? They are linked in the appropriate places above.