Veraflox is an antibiotic prescribed for cats to treat skin infections, specifically wounds and abscesses. Its active ingredient, pradofloxacin, is a third-generation fluoroquinolone approved by the FDA exclusively for feline use in the United States. It comes as an oral suspension (liquid) given once daily, typically for about seven days.
What Veraflox Treats
Veraflox is FDA-approved for skin infections in cats caused by specific bacteria, including several Staphylococcus species, Pasteurella multocida, and Streptococcus canis. In practical terms, the most common scenario is a cat with a bite wound abscess, often from a fight with another cat. These abscesses involve a mix of bacterial types, including anaerobic bacteria (the kind that thrive in the oxygen-poor environment deep inside an abscess). This is where Veraflox has a notable advantage over older antibiotics in the same class: it effectively kills anaerobic bacteria, while older fluoroquinolones like enrofloxacin do not.
Your vet may also prescribe Veraflox for other wound infections that haven’t responded to first-line antibiotics, or when the bacterial culture points to organisms that pradofloxacin covers well. In Europe, it’s also approved for use in dogs and for a broader set of infections, but in the U.S. the label is limited to feline skin infections.
How It Works
Pradofloxacin disrupts the machinery bacteria need to copy their DNA. Specifically, it blocks two enzymes that unwind and cut DNA during replication. Without functioning DNA replication, the bacteria can’t multiply or produce the proteins they need to survive. Older fluoroquinolones primarily targeted just one of these enzymes in certain bacteria, which left gaps in coverage and made resistance more likely. By hitting both targets simultaneously, pradofloxacin covers a wider range of bacteria and reduces the chance that resistant strains will emerge during treatment.
Dosing and Administration
The standard dose is 5 mg per kilogram of body weight, given once daily by mouth. The liquid suspension makes it relatively easy to dose cats of different sizes using the included syringe. For wound infections and abscesses, treatment typically lasts seven days, though your vet may adjust the duration based on how the infection responds.
Once opened, the bottle remains stable for 60 days when stored below 86°F (30°C). If you have leftover medication after that window, discard it.
Common Side Effects
In the clinical trial used for FDA approval, 190 cats received Veraflox. The most frequently reported side effect was diarrhea or loose stools, which occurred in about 4% of treated cats. Other reactions included sneezing, drooling (hypersalivation), itching, and occasional vomiting, though each of these appeared in only 1 to 2% of cats. Most side effects were mild and resolved without additional treatment.
Loss of appetite and lethargy were actually reported slightly more often in cats given the placebo than in those on Veraflox, suggesting these symptoms may relate more to the underlying infection than the drug itself.
Serious Safety Concerns
There are a few important warnings that set Veraflox apart from more routine antibiotics.
Bone Marrow Suppression
When given for longer than seven days, pradofloxacin can lower white blood cell counts in cats, particularly in young kittens. In safety testing at higher-than-recommended doses, some cats developed dangerously low neutrophil counts with evidence of bone marrow suppression. These changes were reversible once the drug was stopped. If your vet prescribes a course longer than seven days, they may want to monitor bloodwork during treatment.
Retinal Damage
Fluoroquinolones as a class carry a risk of retinal damage in cats, which can lead to blindness. This risk is best documented with enrofloxacin, an older drug in the same family. In safety studies, one cat receiving pradofloxacin at four times the normal dose showed minimal photoreceptor degeneration, though the pattern differed from what’s seen with enrofloxacin. The clinical significance isn’t fully clear, but the label advises caution.
Never Use in Dogs
Veraflox is explicitly contraindicated in dogs. Pradofloxacin causes bone marrow suppression in dogs that can be severe, leading to dangerously low platelet and white blood cell counts. If you have both cats and dogs in your household, keep this medication secured and away from your dog.
How Veraflox Compares to Older Fluoroquinolones
Enrofloxacin has been the go-to fluoroquinolone in veterinary medicine for decades, but it has some well-known limitations in cats. Its antibacterial spectrum doesn’t cover anaerobic bacteria, which are common in bite wound abscesses. It also carries a documented risk of irreversible blindness at higher doses. And while enrofloxacin technically shows activity against Pseudomonas bacteria in the lab, resistance develops so quickly in real infections that it’s often ineffective against those organisms.
Pradofloxacin addresses several of these gaps. Its chemical structure gives it genuine anaerobic coverage, making it a better match for the mixed bacterial populations found in abscesses. It also has a dual-target mechanism that makes bacterial resistance less likely to develop during a treatment course. For cats with wound infections and abscesses, these advantages make Veraflox a more targeted choice than older options in the same drug class.
What to Expect During Treatment
You’ll typically give the liquid once a day, at the same time each day, for about a week. Most cats tolerate it without obvious problems. If your cat develops loose stools, that’s the most likely drug-related issue and usually isn’t severe enough to stop treatment. Watch for excessive drooling right after dosing, which some cats experience from the taste.
Signs of improvement in a skin infection or abscess, such as reduced swelling, less discharge, and your cat seeming more comfortable, generally appear within the first few days. Finish the full prescribed course even if the wound looks better early. Stopping antibiotics prematurely is one of the most common ways bacterial resistance develops.