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New Vaccination Protocols - A Review of the Literature
Immunology - Cellular Immunity, Titers

This is a study showing a duration of
immunity by challenge / and by titer of 7 years
by challenge for distemper and parvovirus
vaccines. Rabies vaccine- 3 years by
challenge and 7 years by titer.
All dogs were immune to corona virus
whether they were vaccinated or not.
Scientist have never been able to make adult
dogs sick with corona virus. The fact that
corona does not cause disease in dogs
over 8 weeks of age is best demonstrated by
the data submitted to the USDA for licensure
of this vaccine. They were not able to
challenge the vaccine as they could not make the control dogs sick.

Challenge studies show rabies vaccine is good for more than three years, so if a client
is late they are still protected.

Dr Jean Dodds runs a lab which provides antibody titer measurements for distemper and parvovirus in vaccinated dogs. This study shows excellent protection going out 5 years. But what about the 5 % and 2.45% with low titers? Some only had one vaccine at 12 weeks. Dr Dodds will be the first to tell you a negative titer does not mean lack of immunity, as protection can be provided by memory cells even with a negative titer, and titers do not measure cell mediated immunity.

Protection against mucosal diseases, upper
respiratory diseases like rhinotracheitis and calici virus in cats, and bordetella in dogs requires mucosal immunity. Corona virus in dogs is a mucosal disease in that it only
infects the mucosal layer of the intestines.

Parenteral (injectable) Vaccines do not provide good mucosal immunity. Now we have intranasal vaccines for Rhino, Calici, and Bordetella. It is a good thing adult dogs do
not get disease form corona virus. Corona vaccine cannot work as it does not provide mucosal immunity.

An important thing to note is, mucosal immunity does not protect from infection. It only provides for a lesser degree of symptoms. This is because mucosal memory cells cannot respond with antibodies as quickly as parenteral memory cells. A vaccinated cat can get calici virus infection, but it will not be nearly as sick as an un-vaccinated cat. Rhinotracheitis is a herpes virus and like human fever blisters, relapses are possible. We hope we vaccinate before the cat develops a latent infection.

Mucosal immunity is shorter in duration than the duration with parenteral vaccines. With MLV
vaccines like Rhino/calici we recommend
vaccination every three years.

Giving a half dose to small dogs for vaccines like distemper and parvo is not advisable. It has been shown that a critical mass of
antigen is needed. Perhaps for a vaccine
like lepto we can develop a small dog dose.

Some times medicine will go full circle and we come back to realize the original idea was best. With new vaccination protocols scientist have proceeded in the same direction for 9 years. More and more data continues to come out to support the fact that all these vaccines are not needed.

Last Update 05/05/2006