Bordetella vaccine?

[Alchemist]

A FB friend shared an article on Bordetalla vaccine I thought I'd share. I'd be interested in the opinions among the medically informed on these Boards.

 

Duncan isn't receiving these vaccines; he isn't ever boarded (at conventional facilities, anyway), so there seemed no reason to administer this vaccine. So for me it's mainly a question of curiosity: where do others stand on the safety/efficacy of this vaccine (combination of vaccines)? Is there substantial validity to some of the questions raised (e.g., trans-species transmission risk), or are some of these risks being overstated?

[MaggieDog]

I don't vax for bordetella unless I have no choice. My vet conspired with me to help me circumvent a 6 month interval a boarding kennel required because they felt it was unnecessary!

 

Even after an outbreak at a dock diving event that we attended when the dogs were past the 1 year mark on their vaccine, only one of my dogs got it and she was especially susceptible as she went into heat 2 days after exposure. Her illness only involved coughing for less than a week and a snotty nose for about 9 days, no meds needed.

 

When I taught group classes we suggested the bordetella vax, but did not require it and only had 1 case of it in the 3 years I was teaching, yet down the street at the humane society it was endemic (eg stressed dogs vs "normal" dogs).

[juliepoudrier]

My biggest complaint against vets giving the bordatella vaccine is that they require it when you bring the dog in for boarding or surgery. I may not be a rocket scientist, but I do know that vaccination doesn't provide *instant* protection, so if my dog is at the hospital for a day for a surgical procedure, it gets a vaccine that won't protect it from Bordatella that day--not to mention that the dog's immune system will already be stressed by the surgery. I don't guess I could argue with a hospital that had a policy of vaccinating X number of days before taking a boarder or surgical patient, but I still wouldn't want my dogs vaccinated.

 

This is the line that really struck me in the article:

Vaccination of any sort also elevates histamine which can promote cancer, chronic inflammation and loss of tolerance.

 

I know so many dogs who have been diagnosed with cancers related to the immune system. I have two who have been diagnosed with and treated for mast cell cancers (mast cells are immune system cells involved with the release of histamines).

 

Although I believe it's possible that vet medicine is getting better at diagnosing disease, including cancer, I don't think it's a coincidence that I know more people than could be explained by random chance (IMO) whose dogs have been diagnosed with mast cell cancer, lymphoma, etc.

 

I can't of course directly relate this seeming increased incidence of cancer to vaccination (or overvaccination), but I *am* suspicious, so I vaccinate as minimally as I can and still feel that my dogs are protected.

 

Mine don't get kennel cough vaccine. They were exposed at a trial once, and nearly all of them caught it. As the article noted, it was self-limiting. The only dog we treated for it was Willow, the dog with mast cell cancer, who is also geriatric and so most at risk from complications.

 

I prefer to vaccinate against those diseases that are a real threat to my dogs' lives (and even then there are vaccines I don't use) and leave the rest of them alone.

 

FWIW, the article wouldn't necessarily sway me since I have already made my decision about Bordatella vaccines, but as someone just reading, it appeared to me to be a bit biased toward anti-vaccination. I would find such an article more convicing if it adequately presented both the pros and cons instead of so clearly having an agenda. Then again, it appeared in a magazine that one presumes is geared toward readers who are less inclined to do a lot of vaccinating. And I would have found the cross-speices transmission information more believable if the author had pointed to actual peer-reviewed scientific studies that actually explored that possibility. <--I'm not saying that I disbelieve the information, just that it's not something I would take as true without some actual data to back it up (something beyond hearsay or supposition).

 

J.

[Alchemist]

FWIW, the article ... appeared to me to be a bit biased toward anti-vaccination. I would find such an article more convicing if it adequately presented both the pros and cons instead of so clearly having an agenda. Then again, it appeared in a magazine that one presumes is geared toward readers who are less inclined to do a lot of vaccinating. And I would have found the cross-speices transmission information more believable if the author had pointed to actual peer-reviewed scientific studies that actually explored that possibility. <--I'm not saying that I disbelieve the information, just that it's not something I would take as true without some actual data to back it up (something beyond hearsay or supposition).

 

J.

 

Exactly. That's why I thought it would be interesting to hear the views of Board members with more expertise in this area than I possess. In particular, I wasn't aware of any cross-species transmission aspects, but my ignorance doesn't preclude the existence of real data. It's possible the author simply didn't cite studies because this article was written for laypeople, but, personally, I'd still always prefer to see the appropriate peer-reviewed research cited. (Naming researchers engaging in such research doesn't convince me; I guess I'm a skeptic, having seen too many articles that failed to pass the scrutiny of peer review).

[tastybeets]

Thanks for posting that article. I had no choice with Jack because they vaccinate all strays at the shelter. He got kennel cough ANYWAY which lead to a discussion with a friend about the vaccine's effectiveness. The article was really eye-opening tho. I think I'll skip that vaccine from now on.

[simba]

A FB friend shared an article on Bordetalla vaccine I thought I'd share. I'd be interested in the opinions among the medically informed on these Boards.

 

Duncan isn't receiving these vaccines; he isn't ever boarded (at conventional facilities, anyway), so there seemed no reason to administer this vaccine. So for me it's mainly a question of curiosity: where do others stand on the safety/efficacy of this vaccine (combination of vaccines)? Is there substantial validity to some of the questions raised (e.g., trans-species transmission risk), or are some of these risks being overstated?

 

 

Maybe I'm being too skeptical, but it seemed to me like there was a 'bait and switch' very early on.

 

"There are at least forty agents capable of initiating Bordetella so vaccination might appear to be prudent if it weren’t for the fact that only two of these agents are contained in the intranasal vaccine. This poor percentage truly makes the Bordetella vaccine a shot in the dark. The lack of efficacy is well summarized by noted immunologist Dr. Ronald Schultz: “Kennel Cough is not a vaccinatable disease”.

 

Despite the lack of any real effectiveness, the Bordetella vaccine is routinely given and touted as safe, especially in the intranasal form."

 

So where's the lack of effectiveness? It's just asserted. 'Only two strains are covered' does not mean 'the vaccine does not work.' You could make an argument that those two strains aren't the most common, or something, but no such argument is attempted. Protection against two strains is still better than protection against none, and how many of the forty strains are widespread? What's the prevalence in vaccinated vs unvaccinated dogs?

 

Found the full sentence by Ronald Schultz, by the way- “These two viruses in combination with Bordetella bronchiseptica are the agents most often associated with kennel cough, however, other factors play an important role in disease (e.g. stress, dust, humidity, molds, mycoplasma, etc.), thus kennel cough is not a vaccine preventable disease because of the complex factors associated with this disease.”

 

Schultz appears to be skeptical about vaccines in general, and does indeed believe that these vaccines are given too often, but what he's saying here is that cough can be caused by a number of factors, not just those viruses. He's clearly not definining 'kennel cough' as 'cough caused by those viruses' ("most often associated"), so it would be logically consistent for him to conclude that 'you can't prevent all kennel cough by vaccinating.' That would have been obvious if the original quote was included, but it wasn't.

 

Then there's 'it makes little sense to vaccinate an animal against something it's already been exposed to', which makes no sense considering the argument in the very next sentence about the forty strains. If merely exposing an animal to one strain of the disease is enough, why is exposing them to two 'a shot in the dark'?

 

Especially considering the weasel words 'exposed to.' 'Exposed to' does not equal immunity. We have all of us been exposed to staphylococcus aureus bacteria, but we can still get infections from them. Immunity fades even after you actually get the disease, and I'm sure we all know someone who had the same infection twice, or who had the vaccine and then the infection, because your immune system does not always respond properly and 'remember' what it's supposed to- and again, exposure's a hell of a lot less sure than that, because it could have only been a small immune reaction in the first place since the dog didn't actually get 'sick'.

 

 

As for influenza- first of all there's the assumption that it spread from the horses because of the vaccine, rather than the actual wild virus. Presumably you would be able to compare the strains and actually find out whether this was true. But why is all of this (transmission to humans, gerbils etc) a big risk factor for vaccination, and not for the actual disease, considering that viral shedding is reduced in vaccinated dogs compared to dogs who got the disease? My link

 

"All vaccination creates immune dysregulation" is a bit of a red-flag statement. Okay, it may be used legitimately, but the usual context for the words 'immune dysregulation' and 'vaccination' that I've heard is that it's connected to evidence-free ideas about electromagnetic sensitivity etc. If immune dysregulation is just used in the sense of 'an inappropriately high or low immune response' that depends on how you define appropriate- is it inappropriate in that person's eyes to stimulate the immune system with vaccines? Or if you get the vaccine, nothing happens, no immune response, wouldn't that be 'immune dysregulation'?

 

 

"Perhaps [collapsing windpipe etc] are all complications of Bordatella and the Bordatella vaccine" Have they been reported? How often? What's the comparative risk- which one has them more?

 

"elevates histamine" by how much? Histamine is involved in ridiculous numbers of things in the body, including the immune system (like the pain you'd get from an insect sting). So while it is possible it's linked to cancers, the wording used there could apply to anything from an insect sting to car sickness.

 

 

I dunno, it just all seems kind of free of any solid evidence. They're saying that viruses can sometimes go into human dna and express later, and bacteria might do the same, and the bacteria in the virus might do that, and presumably that might happen more often than with the billions of ordinary bacteria your dog has on and in it at all times because- and then that bit's never explained. Too many gaps for me.

 

And this is from someone who doesn't usually take ibuprofen or aspirin, because the potential side-effects outweigh the benefits for most pain to me.