ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Veterinary Dentistry and Oromaxillofacial Surgery
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1564674
This article is part of the Research TopicRecent Advances in Oral Medicine in Dogs and CatsView all 6 articles
Co-occurrence of feline chronic gingivostomatitis and oral squamous cell carcinoma in 4 cats (2014-2024)
Provisionally accepted
Anson Joji Tsugawa1
Maria M Soltero-Rivera1*
Stephanie Lynne Goldschmidt1
Boaz Arzi1
Tessa Kell1
Naomi Hoyer2
Cynthia Bell3Hanzhi Gao4
Guogen Shan4
Natalia Vapniarsky1- 1University of California, Davis, Davis, United States
- 2Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, United States
- 3Specialty Oral Pathology for Animals, Geneseo, IL, United States
- 4University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States
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Introduction: Cats with refractory feline chronic gingivostomatitis (FCGS) exhibit chronic oral inflammation despite surgical and medical therapy. Such areas may resemble or be at higher risk for oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). Without routine biopsies, occult SCC may remain undiagnosed. Objectives: This study investigated the prevalence and potential association of oral SCC occurrence in cats with refractory FCGS. Methods: A retrospective review of cats with refractory FCGS and oral SCC from two veterinary teaching hospitals (2014–2024) was conducted. Cases with histopathologically confirmed FCGS, SCC, or both were included. Data analyzed included signalment, medical history, treatment, clinical findings, and diagnostics. Results: Two hundred twenty-one cats with refractory FCGS and 24 cats with oral SCC at the first institution, and 32 cats with refractory FCGS and 16 cats with oral SCC at the second institution, were presented over a 10-year period. Only four cats from both institutions had co-occurrence of FCGS and oral SCC. All affected cats exhibited bilateral proliferative FCGS lesions in the caudal oral cavity and developed SCC within 16–29 months (mean: 22 months). Two of four cats had epithelial dysplasia at FCGS diagnosis. SCC occurrence was significantly, inversely associated with FCGS at one institution (0.9%, ρ = -0.1424, p-value = 0.00035) but not the other (5.88%, ρ = 0.0495, p-value = 0.1947). Conclusions: Co-occurrence of FCGS and SCC is rare. While SCC may develop in proliferative FCGS areas, the low occurrence does not establish FCGS as a predisposing factor for SCC.
Keywords: FCGS, Oral SCC, epithelial dysplasia, proliferative inflammation, Cancer, neoplasia Abbreviations ED -epithelial dysplasia FCGS -feline chronic gingivostomatitis MT -malignant transformation SCC -squamous cell carcinoma
Received: 22 Jan 2025; Accepted: 31 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tsugawa, Soltero-Rivera, Goldschmidt, Arzi, Kell, Hoyer, Bell, Gao, Shan and Vapniarsky. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Maria M Soltero-Rivera, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States
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