We have different approaches to rabies in dogs and cats versus humans. The ultimate goal is still the same: preventing this almost invariably fatal infection. However, between humans and animals there are differences in who we target for vaccination, frequency of vaccination, utility of rabies antibody titres, and how we respond to potential rabies exposures,
Pet Vaccination Questions, Part 5: Titres
Titres… ugh. I spend a lot of time answering questions about titres, with little data to go on.
What are titres?
Titres are a measure of antibody levels in the bloodstream. Antibodies are produced by the body in response to infection or vaccination.
What do titres tell us?
Titres indicate whether a specific antibody is
Pet Vaccination Questions, Part 4: Vaccination at the Time of Surgery
A busy hockey weekend delayed this topic. I thought this would be a quick one, but there are some interesting and complex issues…and as we move deeper into the vaccination series, there’s even less information on which to base decisions.
This post deals with issues surrounding vaccination at or near the time of surgery. Typically,
Pet Vaccination Questions, Part 3: Vaccinating “Unhealthy” Animals
The first two parts of this series covered our approaches to vaccination of “healthy” animals. We focus on healthy pets because they comprise the majority of the pet population, and because vaccines are typically labelled for use in healthy pets, e.g. “This product is recommended for the vaccination of healthy dogs…”.
Vaccine labels
Pet Vaccination Questions, Part 2: The Puppy/Kitten Vaccine “Series” (and putting it into an Ozzie context)
I’ll start this off with an introduction to Ozzie, our new-ish pup (he got introduced on Twitter earlier but I haven’t used him for blog material yet). We got him at 7 weeks of age, a day after he was vaccinated, and we need a vaccination plan going forward. It’s ultimately pretty simple, but it’s
Pet Vaccination Questions, Part 1: Rabies Vaccine Timing
For some reason, I’ve been spending a lot more time lately discussing vaccination, so I figured I’d write about a series of vaccine issues, questions and dogmas (that are often non-evidence-based or just downright wrong).
Age for first rabies vaccine
Here in Canada at least, rabies vaccines are licensed for use in dogs and cats
Rabies Round-Up Ontario, New Interactive Case Map
As the weather cools down and wildlife of various kinds become less active (as do many pets and people!), we tend to see a decline in the number of rabies cases detected in the province. It doesn’t mean the risk is no longer there, it just means we’re less likely to encounter the animals that
Domestic Animal Monkeypox Surveillance: UK
With any new, changing or inadequately investigated infectious disease, we need to first understand the scope of the problem, including the range of species that can be infected. The ongoing human monkeypox outbreak has raised concern about spillback of monkeypox virus into animals from humans since, we don’t know much about susceptible animal species.
A
Monkeypox Guidance For Veterinarians
Things have been pretty quite regarding monkeypox in domestic animals lately. Whether that’s because human-to-animal infection is truly rare, and human case numbers are dropping, or whether it’s because there’s not enough surveillance in domestic animals that have been exposed to the virus isn’t clear. I suspect it’s a combination of the two. Our surveillance
New Rustrela Virus Linked To Neurological Disease in European Cats
As an Associate Editor for Emerging Infectious Diseases and as a frequent peer reviewer for other journals, I see lots of paper that report finding a “new” virus. These can be a challenge to interpret, because advances in technology now let us find things we’ve never been able to find before. The problem is, we