From:
AFERRETVET@cs.com
Date: 2011-06-18 03:30:45 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: Distemper vaccine ??
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
Hi Tressie, Jeff, Sukie, and everyone
There seems to be a lot of confusion over the distemper vaccines.
There are 3 vaccines that seem to be mentioned in the vaccine posts.
I will try to clear up some of the confusion.
1) Fervac-D distemper vaccine was made by United Vaccine. It was a
chicken embryo cell culture vaccine that was approved for use in ferrets.
It is no longer made, and they stopped making that vaccine back in the
beginning of 2006. Thus it has been off the market for 5 years.
This is the vaccine that had a lot of allergic reaction problems!
2) Purevax ferret distemper is made by Merial. It is the only distemper
vaccine that is approved for use in ferrets on the US market. It is a
recombinant
vaccine with no adjuvants that has been on the market since Oct 2001.
It has a low vaccine reation rate (1-2%), and most of the vaccine reactions
are
mild in nature. These reactions are easily treated with cortisone, fluids
if needed,
and epi (rarely needed). The only bad thing about this vaccine is the cost,
which
has increased 260% since it first came on the market!
3) Galaxy D was made by Schering-Plough. After Schering merged with
Intervet,
they decided to stop making Galaxy D. This vaccine did have a small study
(that
was published) that showed it did protect ferrets from distemper, so a lot
of vets felt comfortable using it. This vaccine also had a low vaccine
reaction rate
with most of the reactions being mild in nature.
As you can now see Merial's Purevax ferret distemper is the only distemper
only
vaccine that is still on the market. There is no reason to be afraid of
Purevax vaccine reactions because most are mild reactions that can be easily
treated.
Hope that helps,
Jerry Murray, DVM
BTW vaccines are actually approved by the USDA. They have to show that the
vaccine is both safe and effective. To prove that it is effective, Purevax
was giving to ferrets. Then the ferrets were challenged with exposure to
distemper to make sure none of the vaccinated ferrets become sick with
distemper. This is called a challenge study and is the only way to know for sure that
the vaccine will protect ferrets from distemper. </HTML>
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