Low frequency of pre-treatment and post-treatment haematological abnormalities in dogs with non-infectious meningoencephalitis treated with cytosine arabinoside and prednisolone.

Background: Cytosine arabinoside (CA) and prednisolone are drugs commonly used together in the management of canine non-infectious meningoencephalitis (NIME). The aim of this study was to report the haematological findings before and after CA and prednisolone treatment and identify any adverse haematological events in this clinical setting, following the veterinary cooperative oncology group established common terminology criteria for recording adverse events following administration of chemotherapy or biological antineoplastic therapy.

Results: While 48 patients with a presumptive diagnosis of NIME had pretreatment haematology results, only 12 patients met the inclusion criteria of also having post-treatment haematology results available for review after being treated with prednisolone and CA at a standard dose (200 mg/m²) in a single referral hospital in the UK. Forty-nine post-treatment haematology results were available for these 12 patients.

Conclusions: Four adverse haematological events were identified in four patients. None of these events were convincingly attributable to CA administration.