From:
Pat Stauffer
Date: 2001-09-03 09:04:00 UTC
Subject: vaccine reactions.
I live in Phila. Pa. there have been no recent outbreaks of
distemper that I know of, but I work in an animal hospital and
you never know what will come through the door. We did have a
vet exposed to rabies last year via a stray kitten. This makes
the risk of bringing something home better than the average
person, so I do vaccinate every year. I do however have one
girl which I will not vaccinate again until the Merial vaccine
is released. I have almost lost her twice to severe vaccine
reaction even with pretreating. I have had 5 react. Four of
them severely. The head tech at the hospital almost lost her
ferret due to a reaction. I have noticed something curious.
One ferret reacted at the first yearly booster. He was later
found to have insulinoma and adrenal. One started reacting on
the third year booster, he was later found to have cardio.
Another started reacting on the fifth year booster and a few
months later was found to have insulinoma and adrenal. The
tech's ferret reacted on the fourth year booster. He was
diagnosed with lympho and euthanized several months after the
reaction. I have a friend who had a ferret react severely to a
rabies booster when he was 3.5 yrs old and he was later
diagnosed with insulinoma. Connection???? Do some of these
reactors have underlying problems which for some reason
contributes to the reaction? It doesn't happen all the time. I
do have two here that react but are perfectly healthy. It just
seems odd though that 5 out of seven had problems which were
unknown at the time. On the other hand I have vaccinated
ferrets who were known to have underlying problems with no
reaction. Go figure. Another odd thing is four of the seven
were "fancy" colors. Two panda, one silver, and one very light
champagne. The rest were 2 black sable and one sable. Five
were privately bred ferrets and two were pet store ferrets. 5
out of 7 were neuters. It just seems curious.
Pat Stauffer
Weasels
http://pages.prodigy.net/staufferp/