From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2005-05-13 17:15:17 UTC
Subject: RE: Vaccines Reactions
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <6268081.1116004517317.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
> Dr. Cottrell told me that there is a new study that shows a direct correlation between >the lifetime total number of distemper vaccinations and the incidence of reaction.
This is logical due to how reactions occur. Mike, and many members know all this stuff. Still, in case some folks here tend to think that reactions are usually to new things, I'll explain. Reactions happen *normally* to things to which the body has frequent exposure (though some things -- like crustaceans for humans -- are more common triggers than others). For instance, in population studies in the 70s when you saw grain reactions in Europe they were more likley to be to wheat rather than to rice, but in South East Asia rice was the usual cause instead of wheat. Transport people of the same groups to a different location where the usually eatten grain is different and you get whichever grain is most eatten in the new location being the more typical allergan.
The reason for this is that developing a reaction is typically multi-step. During one of the exposures a portion of the immune system goes awry and "decides" that some component of the vaccine or of the matrix carrying it is a major invader. That means that on the next exposure to that ingredient the immune system recognizes it as an invader, goes bonkers and tries pulling out all stops. In an anaphylactic reaction it does so to the point where the body's own response tends to be so strong as to be fatal without treatment (and sometimes with treatment). (It is also possible to encounter neurological damage but survive a reaction -- sometimes the true worst of all worlds depending on the type of damage.)
> Some vets are moving to a every other year distemper vaccination protocol.
Yes. The problem, of course, is that the vaccine makers need to do and complete studies of vaccinating less often to know how long the vaccinews work. There isn't even enough titer knowledge on these the last I heard to be able to accurately make judgements based on titer levels (but that is from several years ago so maybe there is a more recent study of which we can hear).
We usually get our ferrets vaccinated about every year and a half which cuts the exposure rate by 1/3.
We don't personally extend over two years because of the experience of a vet here who treated some ferrets referred to him with CDV. The owner had been convinced to try an "alternative holistic CDV vaccine". Well, it didn't work. The young ones who had only had that all died. The older ones who had typical vaccines in their past survived but had damage -- so they could have reasonable but reduced quality of life only with a lot of extra care and extra vet care through what time remained for them. Unfortuneately, it was never clear if it had been over 2 years or over 3 years since their last standard vaccines before they got infected. (The ferrets were referred to our vet then and good records were not provided.)
Years ago there was a type of vaccine that was "avianized" (grown in eggs, but influenza vaccines are now the only vax I know of made that way) which aren't made anymore and several of them for dogs were tested in ferrets. Those were effective for far longer -- some for about 5 years, some for about 7 years in testing, if memory serves -- but they don't exist any longer. (These are told about in _Biology and Diseases of the Ferret_.)
> Fewer total vaccinations means a smaller chance of a reaction.
Yes.
>Of course this does not mean that there's no chance your ferret will have a >reaction if it's only, say, the second time it is receiving the vaccination, because >that's just not the case.
Exactly. The risk is low but it is always present though we may be able to further reduce it. Some species and some family lines are just plain more inclined to having their immune systems strongly misbehave. There are epidemiological studies indicating that milder forms of allergies are less likley in people who have worms, but studies some time ago trying to decrease allergies by giving safer types of worms didn't pan out, so it looked like having had that part of the immune system used for what it was designed to do had a preventative aspect but not any treatment aspect.
There are also studies pointing to a range of possible contributing factors beyond no worms or vulnerable genetics for being someone with allergies (human studies but some things learned might carry for ferrets), from homes kept extremely clean, to fewer childhood illnesses, to high levels of cockroach exposure, to higher rates of pollution including tobacco smoke in the enviroment (and a recent study indicates that tobacco smoking grandmothers' children and grandchildren (even those whose grandparents live elsewhere or are dead) have higher rates of allergies thought perhaps to reflect a possible mutagenic effect of tobacco smoke on a daughter fetus. (I think the study looked only at females, either for all generations or until the grandchildren's (F2) generation.)