Problems With Canine Over-Vaccination

by Daniel Beatty, DVM

First and foremost, vaccinations are an important component of health care, prevention and wellness for your dog. I am, by no means, recommending not vaccinating your dog.

It is vitally important to vaccinate appropriately.

For the core vaccines of distemper, parvo, adenovirus (together called DAP) and rabies, appropriate vaccination is as young puppies not before 9 weeks of age and with the final puppy vaccine for DAP at 15-16 weeks of age.

Rabies between 4 and 6 months of age and then 1 year after the initial vaccine.

After these puppy vaccines, boosters of these vaccines should not be given before 3 years and in many instances well beyond 3 years. 

There is plenty of evidence and research to support that giving vaccines more frequently does not improve their effectiveness and instead increases the risk of  adverse reactions.

Research and information from veterinarians like Dr Ronald Schultz, Dr Richard Ford and Dr Jean Dodds has been available since the 1970's and continues on to the present day. In 2006 major vaccine guideline changes were made and posted by the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) and the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), recommending 3 year vaccination protocols
for the core vaccines vs annual vaccination.

Here are a couple of research articles from Dr Schultz -
http://www.rabieschallengefund.org/images/Duration_of_Immunity_Schultz.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021997509003338

The consequences of overvaccinating can be immediate or delayed reactions, called vaccinosis.

These reactions can occur anywhere between 24 hours to 45 days. The three major consequences are increased allergy symptoms, autoimmune disorders and cancer. However the list of reactions overall
is quite extensive and includes -

• Autoimmune diseases such as autoimmune hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia, arthritis, skin, and even nervous system disorders - seizures, epilepsy.
• Behavior changes increasing anxiety, obsessive behavior, and/or aggression
• Cancers such as fibrosarcomas at injection site
• Muscle weakness and muscle atrophy
• Chronic digestive problems such as inflammatory bowel
• Skin issues such as chronic skin allergies, self-mutilation and tail chewing

How this occurs, although not completely understood, can be attributed to the overstimulation of the immune system and inflammatory system. 

There are two parts to a vaccine, the antigen and the adjuvant. 

The antigen is the specific disease particle that the vaccine is trying to protect against. The adjuvant is the substance that carries the antigen and includes substances that stimulate the immune system.

What the adjuvant does is yell at the immune system - "Hey look over here I have a disease particle that needs to be attacked!"

Substances such as aluminum salts, organics, and oil based adjuvants are all used to stimulate the immune system. These products are really good at their job, which makes for a better immune response to the vaccine. However the problem with these products is that they are really good at their job, which can overstimulate the immune system.

There have been claims that some of these substances can stimulate the immune system for up to 2 years. 

If you are giving vaccines every year you can obviously see the very likely possibility of immune system  overstimulation.

Some new technologies in adjuvants, such as virosomes, appear to have less overstimulating effects on the immune system, less inflammatory response, and have a technique that mimics the natural way the body reacts to an attacking disease. 

Continued research into these types of adjuvants is important in preventing the reactions to vaccines, however using vaccines appropriately and judiciously is just as important and gives us an answer right now to reducing the possibility of vaccinosis in our dogs.

Take home message: The core vaccines of Distemper, Parvo, Hepatitis and Rabies have a duration of immunity much longer than 1 year and even longer than 3 years.

Vaccinating more than every 3 years has no benefit and actually increases the risk  of reactions.

If you base your dogs health only on risk vs reward it is obvious that vaccinating annually is not in your dog's best interest. For those of you that your dog's health is more important than just risk vs reward, it is even more obvious that you should be reducing how often you give your dog vaccines.

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Daniel Beatty, DVM (Dr. Dan) is an integrative veterinarian that believes in a holistic approach to medicine and wellness. He uses the best of both the allopathic and the holistic worlds of medicine to maintain a proper balance to health and movement for his canine and equine patients. 

He also blogs at Dog Kinetics and loves to teach pet owners his ideas through blogging and webinars.

Articles by Dr. Beatty:
What Acupuncture Did For Intervertebral Disk Disease (IVDD) 

Related articles:

To Booster Or Not To Booster: Jasmine's Parvo and Distemper Titer Results Are Back
Veterinarians And Vaccines: A Slow Learning Curve 
DAP (Distemper, Adenovirus, Parvovirus): Fourth Year In, Still Full Immunity 

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Why vaccinate your children?

QUESTION: Not immunizing does not expose someone to a disease, only actual exposure to the disease does so. If a vaccine is effective and your children are vaccinated, how does an unvaccinated person put them at risk? Especially if that person has not been exposed to the disease in question?

ANSWER: It has to do with herd immunity (also known as "community immunity"). With the exception of the smallpox vaccination (reaction to which is easily observed), none of the vaccinations we give our children are tested individually to see if they "took". This is difficult at best and next to impossible in many cases. Instead, the effectiveness of a vaccination program is measured by the prevalence of the disease before, during, and after vaccination of a target population. If the prevalence of the disease goes down as more people are vaccinated (this is verified using statistical analysis), then the vaccination is assumed to work even if it doesn't in some cases.

In fact, no vaccination (including the smallpox vaccination) works in every single case. There is a small, but non-zero fraction of any vaccinated population in which the vaccination doesn't "take" (this again is statistically testable). What this means is that in any population that has been vaccinated, there is a small residual fraction that is still susceptible to the infection.

The rate at which an infection is transmitted depends upon the "infection triangle": (1) virulence (how easily the infectious agent enters a potential host), (2) resistance (how easily the host fights off the infection), and (3) prevalence (how many carriers/potential spreaders there are in the population). Herd immunity depends on 2 and 3, and is defined as that percentage of a vaccinated population that is high enough to stop further transmission of the infection. For example, epidemiologists (doctors who study how infectious diseases spread through populations) define the "herd immunity threshold" for diptheria as 85% (see here). This means that in a population in which at least 85% of the individuals have been vaccinated against diptheria, the probability of an infectious individual spreading the disease to an unprotected member of the population (i.e. the 15% who have not been vaccinated or in whom the vaccination hasn't "taken") is sufficiently low that unprotected individuals probably won't be exposed.

The problem here is that "unprotected" doesn't necessarily mean "unvaccinated". Like any real process in the real world, not all vaccinations "take". A small but non-zero fraction of vaccinations don't cause the vaccinated individual to develop permanent resistance to the disease. This can happen from a number of factors, including the immune status of the vaccinated individual and variations in the potency of the vaccine. This means that, like the actual rate of resistance following vaccination, the probability that a vaccinated individual is actually resistant to the infection is not 100%, but usually somewhere between 80% and 95%. What this means is that the actual level of herd immunity is lower than the rate of vaccination, sometimes by quite a bit (this is a function of both individual variations and group variability - some people are more likely to develop resistance than others).

Therefore, if people in a population don't get vaccinated, then the size of the susceptible carrier population is larger, and if it's large enough (i.e. greater than the "herd immunity threshold"), then the probability that the infectious agent will be spread is high enough that susceptible individuals (i.e. those that have not been vaccinated AND those whose vaccinations didn't "take") will be exposed to the infectious agent, get the disease, and spread it to other susceptible individuals.

This is why there have recently been mini-epidemics of pertussis (whooping cough), measles, and other infectious diseases that were formally almost completely eliminated. Badly educated people (including, but not limited to people who have a visceral anti-science/anti-government bias) don't vaccinated their children, who become part of the susceptible population who, if they are numerous enough, can spread the disease to others, including those whose vaccinations didn't "take".

So, how do you know if your vaccination (or your kid's vaccination) "took" or not? Simple answer: you don't (indeed, in most cases, even with the old smallpox vaccination, you can't). Therefore those of us who don't want our children sickened, crippled, or killed by a preventable infectious disease are counting on everyone else getting their children vaccinated to the point at which the "herd immunity" of our community is above the "transmissibility threshold" and therefore won't be exposed to the infectious agent.

The same kind of reasoning that underlies the concept of "herd immunity" can be used to see if the argument that increased vaccinations cause autism is valid. If there is a causative relationship between increased vaccinations and autism, and if the underlying causative agent is thimerosol in the vaccinations, then there should be a decrease in autism since thimerosol was removed from the vaccinations. No such correlation has been found; ergo, thimerosol in vaccinations was not the causative agent for the perceived increase in frequency of autism.

Another potential test of this hypothesis is to see if those children who, for whatever reason (e.g. immune dysfunctions, religious prohibitions, lack of access to vaccines, etc.) have NOT been vaccinated have lower rates of autism. This is also not the case, so once again the hypothesis that vaccinations (and specifically vaccinations with serum that has been preserved with thimerosol) cause autism is unfounded. This is precisely the kind of statistical correlation testing that is the basis for every single one of the peer-reviewed epidemiological studies that have been done to determine if there is a causative link between vaccinations and autism (or ADHD, or your choice of mental disorder for which we do not yet know the underlying cause). And every single one of these studies (and there have now been many, including several meta-analyses of multiple studies) have shown no statistically significant (i.e. real) correlation between rates of vaccination and the observed rate of increase in autism, ADHD, and some other developmental disorders?.

So, what is causing the statistically detectable increase in the rate of autism, ADHD, and some other developmental disorders? There are plenty of candidates. People (both men and women) are having children at older ages, which has been shown to be causally related to some of these disorders. People are exposed to increasing levels of artificial chemicals and heavy metals in the environment, which again have been shown to be causally related to some of these disorders. Perhaps most significantly, the diagnostic criteria for some of these disorders have changed, especially for ADHD and autism, which are now considered to be "spectrum" disorders, rather than single pathologies that one either has or does not have. Had the current criteria for these developmental disorders been used when I was a kid, I would almost certainly have been diagnosed with ADHD and also probably mild Aspergers' syndrome (i.e. autism spectrum disorder). When you change the definition of a disease, you change your perception of its prevalence.

The same is not the case for the demonstrated decline in crippling and potentially fatal diseases, however. There is very strong statistical evidence that this dramatic decline over the past century and a half has been due to two factors: vaccination and public health. Both of these were and are developed by medical scientists, implemented by health professionals, and supported (and in some cases legally mandated) by governments, usually at the state level.

I believe that it is the case that in New York State you can refuse to have your children vaccinated for religious reasons, yet the public schools are still required to let those children attend classes and therefore expose all of their classmates to an increased possibility of contracting a potentially crippling or fatal disease. In my opinion this is wrong: children who have not been vaccinated should not be allowed to even enter a public building, much less attend public school. Sure, their parents can exercise their right to endanger their children's health (whether their children have a right to not be endangered by their parents is another question), but that right should not take precedence over the rights of other parents (and their children) to not be exposed to the threat of contracting the diseases that such parents have exposed their children to.

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As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!

--Allen

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