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Vaccine Types
August 31, 2010
The three main types of vaccines are modified live virus (MLV), killed virus and recombinant virus.
Modified live virus (MLV) vaccines use a live but weakened strain of a virus to stimulate the production of antibodies to fight disease. This produces a stronger and longer-lasting immunity with fewer doses of vaccine. The most common MLV vaccine for dogs provides protection against distemper, hepatitis, para influenza and parvo virus. Those are the diseases we are talking about when we tell you your animal needs a “DHPP” vaccine. The common MLV vaccine for cats protects against feline viral rhinotracheitis, calicivirus and panleukopenia, also known as feline distemper. These are the “FVRCP” vaccines.
Beause of the deadly nature of rabies, rabies vaccines for dogs are from a killed virus and contain an adjuvant which is a substance to stimulate the body’s immune response to the vaccine. Adjuvants, when used sparingly, have few ill effects in dogs.
In cats, adjuvants have been linked to vaccine-related fibro sarcomas, cancerous tumors at the site of the vaccine. Although rare, it is a major concern since this type cancer is extremely malignant, fast-growing, and will spread quickly to other parts of the body. For that reason we use only PureVax rabies vaccine for cats which utilizes an extremely complex process of recombinant DNA engineering instead of an adjuvant. That is why the feline rabies vaccine is more expensive than canine rabies vaccine. While less expensive adjuvanted feline rabies vaccines are still available and widely used, we never use them at our clinic and we would strongly urge you not to allow them to be used on your cat.
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