JB - I am unfamiliar with any study supporting that claim. Do you have a link to provide to the study(s)? I like to stay current on this topic. Thanks!
I’m not a vet, but doesn’t a vaccine every 6 months seem excessive? I do know that Potomac Horse Fever usually requires a booster (had a horse get sick 16 or 17 years ago, but I unknowingly exposed her to a situation to catch it, and it was right around the time she should have been given the booster for it. She did recover, but was never quite right afterward), but haven’t heard about others needing boosters.
[QUOTE=Dramapony_misty;8300837]
I’m not a vet, but doesn’t a vaccine every 6 months seem excessive? I do know that Potomac Horse Fever usually requires a booster (had a horse get sick 16 or 17 years ago, but I unknowingly exposed her to a situation to catch it, and it was right around the time she should have been given the booster for it. She did recover, but was never quite right afterward), but haven’t heard about others needing boosters.[/QUOTE]
Some people do flu/rhino every 2 or 3 months! There has been some conjecture that the neuro form of the disease is a result of this overvaccination, resulting in a mutated virus.
I am not anit-vacc, but I am anti too much vacc! And have had several horses react to the rhino vaccine, so I’d prefer to not be forced into doing it twice a year!
How long is the “season” most of you are showing? If your season is less than 6 months, you may still be able to give the vaccine once/year - just give it 2 weeks or so prior to your first show…
[QUOTE=Uncorked;8300800]
JB - I am unfamiliar with any study supporting that claim. Do you have a link to provide to the study(s)? I like to stay current on this topic. Thanks![/QUOTE]
Poor choice of works on my part for “can” and “significant” but here you go
Vaccines may assist in limiting the spread of outbreaks of EHM by limiting nasal shedding EHV-1 and dissemination of infection. For this reason some experts hold the opinion that there may be an advantage to vaccinating in the face of an outbreak, but in advance of EHV-1 infection occurring in the group of horses to be vaccinated. The vaccines with the greatest ability to limit nasal shedding include the 2 high-antigen load, inactivated vaccines licensed for control of abortion (Pneumabort-K[SUP]®[/SUP]: Pfizer; & Prodigy[SUP]®[/SUP] Merck), a MLV vaccine (Rhinomune[SUP]®[/SUP], Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica) and an inactivated vaccine, (Calvenza[SUP]®[/SUP], Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica).
http://www.aaep.org/-i-173.html
Very different diseases and transmissions. In heavily competing horses it’s often recommended to give flu/rhino every 3-4 months.
Every vaccine needs boosting. The frequency depends on the disease and the individual horse’s situation. Rabies and tetanus need to be boosted yearly, and if there is exposure. The encephalitis vaccines on the warmer climates need to be boosted ever 6 months, and some vets recommend a bit more often in places where mosquitoes are a problem all of the time and an area has a higher incidence of those diseases.
Ok thanks JB - I just thought that perhaps there had been some studies with statistical information. I was part of several host animal studies during the development of the Calvenza vaccine so am familiar with how long we saw the shedding (thru the taking of nasal swabs) but we were only comparing vaccinated to completely naïve horses. Which by the way it is not easy to find horses that have a low enough titer for these types of studies! We got horses from North Dakota that were never vaccinated nor were their mothers - when they were selected they had a low enough titer but when they arrived (they were shipped together and not with any other horses that may have been infected or vaccinated) several had titers high enough they had to be removed from the study.
