Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Testing adult dogs' immunity to parvovirus and distemper
By Waner, Trevor et al.·Published in Journal of veterinary diagnostic investigation : official publication of the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians, Inc·2006·Israel Institute for Biological Research·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Application of a dot enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for evaluation of the immune status to canine parvovirus and distemper virus in adult dogs before revaccination.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A study looked at 158 adult dogs to see if they still had protective antibodies against canine parvovirus and distemper virus before their annual vaccinations. It found that 84% of the dogs had enough antibodies to be considered protected, while 11% had borderline levels for parvovirus and 10% for distemper. A small number of dogs had no detectable antibodies at all. This suggests that veterinarians can use a specific test to check a dog's immunity and only revaccinate those whose antibody levels have dropped, potentially avoiding unnecessary vaccinations.
People also search for: dog vaccination schedule · canine parvovirus immunity test · distemper vaccine for dogs
Abstract
A growing body of literature has been published indicating that the current practice of annual vaccination of dogs may not be beneficial and in some cases may even be harmful. A number of publications have proposed assessing the immune status of dogs before annual revaccination. In this study the usefulness of a commercially available dot-ELISA kit was evaluated to determine the duration IgG antibody titers to canine parvovirus (CPV) and canine distemper virus (CDV) in 158 dogs vaccinated at least one year ago. Overall, the percentage of dogs with protective antibody titers to both CPV and CDV was 84%. The percentage of dogs with borderline antibody titers was 11% for CPV and 10% for CDV. Four percent of the dogs had no detectable antibody to CPV and 6% had no antibody to CDV. The results reported here are in good agreement with other studies measuring IgG antibody levels. It is concluded that the kit offers veterinarians the opportunity of determining antibody titers and revaccinating only those pets whose antibody titers to specific diseases have waned.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16789715/