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RE: [RC] Vaccines question - Susan E. Garlinghouse, DVMYou said.... "and might contraindicate vaccination if causing secondary purpura hemorrhagica is a reasonable possibility." ?????HUH???? Can you please put that in laymen's terms for the DVM impaired? :) Sorry. It's an immune-mediated disease where antibodies against Strep equi combine with some components of the Strep equi organism itself and cause a severe systemic inflammation. The legs, face and underline of the belly swell up and develop cellulitis, inflammation of the blood vessels, little blood spots inside the mucous membrane (mouth, etc), variable fever, possibly laminitis, possibly kidney involvement. The few I've seen don't seem to feel all that bad, have a god appetite, but feel crummy just from the swelling, and then secondary infection of tissue starts sloughing off. Pretty icky disease with a guarded prognosis. It's most likely to occur if a horse is vaccinated against the disease soon (usually a few weeks or maybe a month or two) after recovering from a clinical case of strangles, or possibly from exposure that elicited a high strangles titer. I don't remember the titer levels, but if they fall into the "high" category, you don't revaccinate, just to be on the safe side. If you do, it's not a guarantee the horse will develop purpura hemorrhagica, just a possibility. I always ask about any strangles cases, and will skip vaccinating against strangles if there's any question about it. Ok.... so, there different titers for different things? One titer per disease? Yes, titers for each separate disease. For example, I vaccinate for EWT, Flu/Rhino, West Nile and Rabies. Would that require a different titer for each? Yes. I suppose you can measure antibody titers for each one if you really wanted to, but haven't ever looked into submitting samples myself, so not sure of the availability or cost for those. I hope this isn't too stupid of a question, but do you find that horses under stress, like endurance horses, show lower titer levels? I guess what I'm asking is can stress alter the numbers in any way? I'm thinking of how stress affects the immunity system in humans/horses. Just curious. It's not a stupid question. I haven't ever specifically measured titers relevant to stress, but any stress will increase glucocorticoid production in the adrenal glands, and that suppresses the immune system, and thus could suppress an appropriate immune response---including being able to fight off an infection, repair damaged tissue, respond to vaccination with a decent immune response, etc. Any stress that "distracts" the immune system away from its primary job is going to make an appropriate immune response less likely. That's why if you do vaccinate, you ideally don't want to do so in an animal that's sick, emaciated, overly tired or otherwise physiologically stressed. That's also part of the argument (a good one, I think) against vaccinating against dozens of diseases all at once---it just overwhelms the immune system and decreases the titers for any given disease. I'm not an anti-vaccine advocate, but I do prefer spacing out vaccines several weeks or months apart when possible to give the immune system an opportunity to focus its response to each vaccine challenge. JMO, though. Hope this helps. Susan Garlinghouse, DVM =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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