Should we be doing more to protect our horses against equine influenza?
Vaccination
against equine influenza became mandatory for racing Thoroughbreds in
the United Kingdom in 1981. Since then major outbreaks have been few
and far between. Vaccination has two aims: to protect the vaccinated
individual from becoming ill and to limit the spread of infection by
reducing the amount of virus a vaccinated horse will shed if it does
become infected.
The
flu virus can change the proteins on its surface, a process known as
antigenic drift. These surface proteins are the structures that are
recognised by the immune-system. If they change, a vaccine that has
been produced to recognise proteins on older virus strains will be
less effective. The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)
monitors field surveillance data and recommends suitable vaccine
strains to be included in commercial vaccines. None of the vaccines
currently on sale in UK have the most recently recommended strains
and only one in the US achieves this.
1 comment:
This is a very good article, however; there are a few points I wanted to address to with my concern. Are we concerned with the influenza outbreak solely due to the fact that the competitive horses can receive this outbreak? If this outbreak is not considered fatal, then why are vaccine strains being mismatched to the effect where the outcome of the horse is more likely to become fatal? If we are so unsure about the vaccine, how could it ever be required with so much room for error? I feel like as a horse owner myself, and the "wake-up call" in Australia, I personally would not feel comfortable giving my horse a vaccine that could cause side effects more than a benefit. Vaccinating for things such as rabies are essential due to the fact that the effect can be greater on the horse and can lead to the point of death. If this flu were to outbreak, this article says a horse would be sick for two weeks, and the outcome would not be fatal. Therefore, I feel like the more comfortable route to take would be to not use the vaccine.
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