Dog Immunology Basics with Dr. Trisha Rettig, PhD

During this webinar, Dr. Rettig provides an introduction to the immune system and explains how our bodies respond to vaccination. Tune in to hear an explanation of vaccine titers, nomographs, and different types of vaccines!

Resources:

• CAVIDS Lab
• Avidog Canine Nomograph Ebook

Transcription

Dr. Judi Stella [0:01] Hello, everyone! Thank you for taking the time to join us today. We’re really excited to have Dr. Trisha Rettig here to talk about immunology. Trisha received her PhD from Kansas State University with an emphasis on immunology. After graduation, Trisha had maybe the coolest postdoc ever. She was at Loma Linda University, and her research focused on immune response to vaccination in microgravity, so she had space mice that she worked with—worked closely with NASA. She’s done some additional work focusing on genetics in pathogenic bacteria. Today, she’s going to give us an introduction to vaccines and the immune system, which is a timely subject, considering what’s going on in the world. Welcome, Trisha! Take it away.

Dr. Trisha Rettig [0:48] Thank you! I’m so happy to be here. Thanks, you guys, for having me. Judi gave me a wonderful introduction, but just to give you guys a little more background: My PhD is in immunology and both my PhD and my postdoc work focused on the immune response to vaccination in space mice. When I’m not busy being a scientist, I have a Pembroke Welsh Corgi and a Golden Retriever. I’m active in multiple dog sports. I’m also a professional dog trainer. Not only am I a full-time scientist, I’m also a full-time dog person. Just as a note, all opinions here expressed are my own and aren’t necessarily those of my employer. 

[1:30] All that being said, the overarching point of this presentation is that vaccines are important. It’s important that we talk about them. It’s part of being a responsible dog owner. But also, I am not a DVM. You have to work with your vet when you’re going through all of your vaccine choices. I’m also presenting this from an immunologist’s point of view rather than a vet’s point of view, so it’s going to be a little different spin. But all that being said, you must work with your vets when you are making decisions about vaccines. 

[2:05] What we’re going to cover today: we’re going to go over some of the frequently asked questions about vaccines; we’re going to have an introduction to the immune system; we’re going to talk about the immune response to vaccination; we’re going to briefly touch on titers, nomographs, and when to vaccinate; and then I want to spend some time going through what’s actually in a vaccine (what are the vaccine types) and talking about adverse reactions. 

[2:30] I went through and picked some of the big, overarching questions that people have about vaccines and then have gone through and answered those with some scientific studies. Most of these studies are done in humans, just because we don’t have as many resources in dog vaccines, but I definitely added dog research where I could. 

[2:54] FAQs

Are vaccines dangerous? 

While specific individuals can always respond poorly to a vaccine, as a general rule, they are safe, and they are important for disease control. 

Do vaccinations cause immunosuppression? 

There is no sign of immunosuppression or altered response to unrelated antigens (and we’ll talk about those a little bit later). Basically, what this is telling us is there are no long-term immunosuppressive effects from vaccinating a human or a dog. Now, there are some viruses that rely on immunosuppression as part of their innate cellular cycle, as part of just being a virus. Some of these can cause transient immunosuppression, but this is entirely normal. It lasts a couple of days, maybe a week; it’s not something that happens long-term. 

Do vaccines cause autism or, in our dogs, other neurodevelopmental issues? 

Multiple studies have found no associations between vaccines and autism, including studies that include siblings of autistic people. So, people that may be considered extra high-risk for developing autistic tendencies do not have issues with vaccines. 

Are we giving too many vaccines (total, or given at once)? 

We know that infants have a theoretical ability to respond to at least 10,000 vaccines at one time. Obviously we aren’t giving 10,000, but when we’re giving 3, 4, 5—we’re still well within the safety margin. Additionally, research in dogs shows administering rabies at the same time as one of your standard 5-way vaccines resulted in immune responses or protection for all of those vaccines. 

Do vaccines cause autoimmune disorders?

In humans, there is no link between vaccines and MS and any MS symptoms. Also, there is no link between vaccines and Type 1 diabetes. These are just some examples that have been well-studied. 

Are vaccine ingredients safe?

Basically, the answer is yes. The ingredients are safe. (And we’ll cover this a little more in-depth later.)

[5:10] Given all that, let’s have an introduction to the immune system at a very basic level, and also an introduction to vaccines. There are two main arms of the immune system. There’s the innate immune system and the adaptive immune system. So the innate immune system is basically our first line of defense. It’s not non-specific; it’s just responding to the fact that there’s an invader of some type. It doesn’t develop an immune memory. It doesn’t prevent you from getting the same infection again. It consists of cells that are called antigen presenting cells or APCs, cells that can directly target infections, and they also help recruit the adaptive immune system cells. They have special receptors to sense infections, and this also includes things such as the skin (which is obviously preventing you from getting infections) but also things like antimicrobial peptides (they are things that are able to help prevent you from getting infections in the first place). The important part of the innate immune system is that it’s not responding to a specific thing. So it’s responding to just the fact that there’s a challenge. On the other side, adaptive immunity is where we start building those specific immune responses. Once you get vaccinated, for example, for parvo, your adaptive immune system is able to come in and protect you from getting parvo again. So, this develops a memory. This is where we can have these long-lived cells that are able to prevent just from getting infected over and over and over again. This is composed primarily of B cells (which are, in my opinion, the best cells and what I have studied). They secrete antibodies, help activate T cells, and they help tailor the immune response. On the other hand, we have T cells, and they are able to target directly the cells that are infected, and they also help activate B cells, and (again) help tailor the immune response. This is how we get this very specific response and are able to respond to a pathogen directly. Another thing that’s also come up (especially because of the news and Covid right now) is what’s called passive immunity. This is when we transfer antibodies from one person or dog to another person or dog. In this case, we’re seeing passive immunity being used for Covid treatments. People who have survived Covid can be treated with anti-Covid antibodies. The same thing happens in our dogs, from the mother’s milk. And the same thing in humans. The bitch can provide antibodies to their puppies. This is called passive immunity. It’s only good as long as the antibodies are there. So, there’s no memory created here. Even if you get passive immunity—our puppies have passive immunity from their mother;  that doesn’t protect them from parvo later, unless they’ve been able to mount their own adaptive response. 

[8:14] We’re going to go over a very brief idea of how the immune response to a vaccination happens. When we look at the response, it usually takes place over about two weeks. We start with injecting the vaccine, and the vaccines are full of what we call antigens. This is essentially part of whatever infection we’re trying to prevent. This is what the immune system can actually respond to. In vaccines, this is often a surface protein on the outside of the bacteria or the virus, or it can be (in some cases) the whole organism itself. It just depends on what the vaccine is for. Once we do that injection, our innate immune cells arrive where the injection is, because they’re able to sense this invasion or this challenge, and they respond to the area. Some of these innate immune cells fight infections by gobbling up and digesting the pathogens. They can also help recruit other cells to the area, so the immune response to a vaccination or whatever we have—a challenge—is an ongoing cyclical thing, where we bring in one set of cells and we bring in the next set of cells and we bring in the next set of cells. Part of these innate immune cells help bring those in. Some of these innate immune cells are able to gobble up these antigens and then present them on their surface. These are called APCs, which we mentioned before. These APCs help by starting the adaptive immune response. The next step takes place in a lymphoid organ. In this case, we’re going to talk about lymph nodes. These are on the side of your neck. We can feel them when you get really sick; they start to swell up. But this is where part of the adaptive immune response happens. Our innate cells can move over to these lymphoid organs. Our adaptive cells are hanging out. Some of our antigen can also move into this lymphoid organ. This is where we start to create the adaptive immune response. They can contact each other here, so our innate immune cells and our adaptive immune cells come into contact. They start activating each other. This leads to the secretion of antibodies, and these antibodies are then able to go throughout the body and flow through the blood. This is what’s going to help us be able to fight off the infections across the body. These adaptive cells themselves can leave, and it can work both for creating memory and for fighting the infection itself. If we have an intracellular organism (something like a virus), we need to be able to use T cells to attack those. T cells specifically target infected cells, so the T cells can help with that. Sometimes these cells are leaving to go create memory, which is long-term and stored in the bone marrow for a large part of the animal’s life, if not their entire life; some of them are going to go fight infections. Some of our adaptive cells are also able to bind directly to these antigens, and these also produce antibodies that circulate throughout the body. This gives us an idea of—from start to end—what are we really trying to work for. The idea is that we’re trying to create these antibodies that are able to bind to these antigens and are able to specifically target an infection. 

[11:50] Again, just a quick overview: Innate cells arrive at the injection site. Some of the cells and antigen are able to travel through the lymph and through the blood system to get to the lymphoid organs. Here, the innate and adaptive cells interact. The adaptive cells are able to multiply and are activated to respond to the challenge, and this is what helps you fight the infection or what helps you mount a proper immune response. There are two different types of these adaptive cells. We have what are called effector cells (these are short-lived, and they basically just blow up when you have an infection; they fight off the infection, and then they die). And then we have memory cells (these are the ones that are long-lived, and they help prevent the reinfection).

[12:36] I wanted to talk quickly about booster shots. What these are is they help build memory. We also know there are biological limits to memory. Continuing to vaccinate an already-immune animal does not make memory better. Once you have memory, there comes a certain point where you may lose that memory, especially in humans, right? We’re living 70-80 years; your immune cells can only survive so long. We need to get boosters—for example, tetanus is every 10 years—to make sure that we’re keeping that memory good. Within that ten years, you don’t need to keep vaccinating. It doesn’t help anything to revaccinate an already-immune animal. These boosters help ensure that a proper or effective immune response is generated in the first place, and the idea about these boosters is that they can occur both by natural exposure or by revaccination. For example, if your puppy is fully vaccinated against parvo but comes in contact with parvo later, their antibody levels are going to spike again. This vaccine 2 could be an immune response due to just naturally coming in contact, or it could be a vaccine itself. That’s kind of why we use booster shots. 

[14:00] Immunological memory is what prevents you from getting the infection if you’re already immune. This is why we don’t get a lot of our same infections twice. This is highly specific to a specific infection. The advantage of this memory is that it’s really fast to respond. That’s why, for the most part, if you come in contact with (for example) a cold virus that you’ve seen before, you don’t really feel anything. You might feel a little off for a day or two, as your body kicks it into high gear, but these are quick. These are within a couple of hours, we’re starting to see this immune memory response. A lot of times you can fight off infections without even necessarily knowing. After our first vaccination, we’ve got one T cell hanging out here, one B cell hanging out here. We got an antibody. We can prevent this infection from happening. After the second exposure, these cells kick it into high gear. They’re able to expand quickly. We’re able to mount an immune response quickly. The advantage of doing this is a lot of our bacterial and viral cells replicate really fast. E. coli is able to double every 20 minutes. If we’re able to mount an immune system response quickly, we can prevent these infections from getting out of control. This is what really allows us to use vaccines and to be protected. 

[15:39] I’m going to talk very briefly and generally about titers, nomographs, and when to vaccinate puppies. 

[15:48] What is a titer test? A titer test measures how much antibody is in the blood against a specific pathogen or antigen. They are a marker of memory. What this tells us is this is how much antibody is in the blood. When we look at cellular memory, which is the memory that’s actually able to expand (like we were talking about) and mount quickly, that’s called cellular memory—and that exists in the bone marrow. We don’t have a good way to measure cellular memory that’s cheap, that’s quick, that’s not painful. Getting bone marrow samples is not something we really want to be doing. But this is a basic tenant of immunology. If you have antibody levels, you have memory cells. These titers go up based after each subsequent exposure, so this is the idea that a high titer means that an animal has been exposed and has likely developed a good memory response. I wanted to give you guys some examples here. These are two different titers from two different labs. Each lab will have a different number of what’s determined protected. This one up here, this is for my Golden Retriever, Hubble. This is his titer, right? For CPV, the CPV cutoff is greater than 40, so he’s at 5120, and the CDV is at 8, and he’s greater than or equal to 8. What these numbers are is—this is the number of dilutions it takes to be able to get a reading. This means it took more dilutions to get to here than it did to get to here. This number above the cutoff number does not matter. As long as they are above the cutoff number, that’s all that counts. Having more antibodies for something is not better. I just want to make sure that you understand that. Paige, his mom, was at the cutoff. Hubble is much above. Both of those dogs are equally protected. Both of those dogs are safe. Trying to get this number ridiculously high is not going to do anything better for you. Conversely, this is my Corgi down here. The cutoff here for parvo is 80. This dog is not currently protected against parvo. So, she needs a booster shot. This is when we can use one of these boosters. Her antibody level has fallen down. We can give her one of these boosters and be able to boost her back up. However, she is covered for both adeno and for distemper. This gives you an idea of how we can use these titers. To give you some reference, Hubble was 11 weeks when we pulled this; he’d had one set of puppy shots. This is from when Roz was 8, so she had one set of puppy shots at 8 weeks and a titer to confirm that she had an immune response, and she has not had a parvo shot since then. This gives you an idea that these vaccinations can be really long-lasting in some dogs. She may never need an adeno or a distemper booster again, but she does need a parvo booster. I hope that makes sense! If you guys have questions, please ask. We can go back through and cover it.

[19:55] Maternal antibodies: these are what the mother, the bitch, is obviously able to give to her puppies. So, colostrum is what a bitch produces first. This is where we’re able to transfer immunity from the mother to the puppies. This is passive immunity again. It means that the mother is not producing an immune response in the puppies that will be long-lasting; it’s just to protect them while they’re still growing. It is important to vaccinate at a very specific sweet spot here. We need to make sure the mother’s antibodies have degraded enough that they aren’t going to bind to the vaccine and prevent it from mounting an immune response in the puppy. But we also need to make sure that we aren’t vaccinating too early, that her antibodies are going to get in the way, and we don’t want to vaccinate too late that we’re missing very important social windows for our puppies. If we were to look at the antibody levels in the blood, our puppies get their first dose of colostrum, they’re protected, but they start losing this maternal antibody. There comes a point where, as we saw in the titers before, you lose the ability to fully protect. This is when we start having a risk zone. It takes further degradation of those antibodies before those puppies can mount an immune response. This is when we want to vaccinate, to make sure that our puppies are able to mount their immune response; they’re able to stay safe. 

[21:30] These are examples of nomographs. Paige is Hubble’s mom, and we saw hers tied to Hubble’s titers on the way back. This is the old style. With Paige’s puppies, they vaccinated at 7 weeks, and they were able to be protected. This is the new style: It gives you an idea. These are how these antibodies are breaking down. I’m not going to go into this into depth but what these nomographs are is they’re based on your bitch’s antibody level (and they are vitally important for making sure that your puppies are protected). These are $50. They are one of the cheapest things that you can do to make sure that your puppies are safe. I’m not going to cover these in depth, like I mentioned. I suggest that you go to CAVIDS. They are the ones at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who are able to do this. But also Avidog has an amazing book that’s for free, and they also have an amazing webinar that goes into this a lot more in detail. It’s going to be able to answer your questions more specifically. We’ll make sure when this goes out that you guys get links to those things. In my personal opinion, this is probably the most important thing that you can do for your puppy. There’s cases where these dogs can’t be vaccinated until 10, 12, 16 weeks—and if you follow whatever your normal is (say 8, 10, 12) but your puppy can’t be protected until 16 weeks, you think that your puppy is safe, and it’s really not. It’s important to make sure that our dogs are fully protected from these. This is my push. Go check out the Avidog resources. Get these done. It’s just a simple blood draw. You send them out for $50. It’s absolutely worth it to make sure that your puppies are protected. 

[23:49] From here, I want to talk a little bit more about vaccines themselves: what’s in vaccines, what are the different types of vaccines, and to just give you some basic knowledge about them.

[24:00] We’re going to go through the types of vaccines. The ones that we use most often are attenuated vaccines. These are all either modified-live or avirulent-live, depending on if they’re bacterial or if they’re viral. They mimic a natural infection, so they’re actually able to replicate within the body without making you sick with the symptoms of whatever that disease is. These are by far the best way to achieve high levels of protection. Because this is essentially getting an infection, the body is able to respond to it in a proper way that most mimics an actual infection without you getting sick. We also use inactivated vaccines; these are usually killed vaccines or whole inactivated pathogens, in the case of some bacteria. These pathogens are unable to replicate after injection. The most common one for us is rabies. These are inactivated—sometimes because we can’t get an avirulent or a modified-live to work, but sometimes because they’re too dangerous. Having a version of live rabies replicating within you is a dangerous thing, so we have to use killed vaccines in some cases. These are maybe associated with increased adverse reactions to the vaccine responses. When possible, you should be using modified-live vaccines. 

[25:36] There are also some recombinant vaccines out there. This is when a select part of the virus or bacteria is transferred into a different source. These allow specific antigens, again, to be presented without needing the whole original virus or bacteria. We haven’t necessarily seen a lot of these yet in dog vaccines, but we’re definitely seeing a lot of them in human vaccines. And then we also have toxoid vaccines. These are inactivated toxins. They’re pretty uncommon in dogs. We just have the rattlesnake vaccine. But this is tetanus and diphtheria in humans; they’re toxoid vaccines. They basically just take whatever the toxin is and inactivate it, so that way your body can respond to it. 

[26:26] Let’s look at what’s in an actual vaccine. We have the antigenic material, which we’ve sort of talked about already. We have adjuvants. What these are is these produce an earlier immune response, a higher immune response, and a longer-lasting immunity. They can target specific parts of the immune system to direct the response. They can cause the antigen to stay in an area longer. The idea of an adjuvant is that it helps you mount an actual immune response. It helps create the immune response, and it helps you mount and create a good memory. Some vaccines need adjuvants to work properly. Some don’t. It entirely depends on the vaccine, the virus or bacteria you’re trying to protect against. You have to remember that these viruses and bacteria have been around for a very long time, and their whole goal is to evade the immune system. Some of them are really, really good at it. Some of them are less good at it. But sometimes we need the adjuvants to be able to help increase the immune response. There are often preservatives or stabilizers; it’s going to be things such as antibiotics or sugars. And then there are sometimes residuals from manufacturing, so cell culture materials, inactive ingredients, and antibiotics. This gives you a general idea of what’s in a vaccine. Different vaccines have different components. You have to look at each specific one to really know. 

[28:03] I want to touch on thimerosal, because this is a thing. Thimerosal is a mercury-containing preservative. Yes. Whenever we say mercury, people are very scared. However, it’s important to know that, chemically and scientifically, elements can become inert when bound. The best example we can use of this is sodium chloride. So, sodium—I don’t know if your chemistry teachers did this. (Mine did.) You put a hunk of sodium in water, just pure sodium, it starts on fire. Like, it just burns along on the surface of the water. Chlorine gas will kill you. You combine sodium and chlorine, you make table salt. Number one, we need salts to live. Most of us use table salt. So, this idea that you can take two dangerous things by themselves and combine them is just a function of chemistry, and they can be safe. Thimerosal is safe. It was falsely associated with autism. This article has been retracted. The gentleman who wrote the article has had his medical license revoked. And yet, the story lives on. Ethylmercury, which is what thimerosal is, is easily excreted from the body. We can get rid of it quickly. The kidneys handle it just fine. Methylmercury—which is the mercury we’re worried about in things like tuna or in lead paint (things that have mercury) or old thermometers—this is not easily secreted from the body. These two things function differently. If you are additionally worried about Thimerosal, we do have thimerosal-free vaccines now in dogs, in humans—everything is thimerosal-free. And there’s an increased level of thimerosal-free vaccines for dogs. But thimerosal itself—all the worries about it have been debunked. 

[30:18] One of the other ones that people tend to get worried about is aluminum. Now, there are some downsides to aluminum. It can cause increased allergies. It is associated with neurotoxicity but not at the levels that we’re talking about in a vaccine. And it has been associated with granulomas, more so in cats than in dogs. We do know that aluminum can have some downsides. It can cause injection site reactions. But it is easily excreted through the kidneys, and the body is able to handle the very small amounts of these in vaccines. It has the strongest safety record of any human adjuvant. It was first used almost a century ago now, in 1926. There are no associations with serious or long-lasting effects in children. There are no correlations between aluminum levels in the blood and infant development. And a study on human infants, which is as close as we can get to puppy-size, shows that aluminum levels are well below the minimal risk levels. We’ve heard these stories about how aluminum is really dangerous and it might cause long-term effects. Right now, there is no evidence that these chronic disorders are caused by excess aluminum in the blood. While we’ve heard the stories, there is no current scientific data to back that up. So, aluminum is safe. There are some risks associated with it, the same as there are risks with everything. We just need to take that into account. 

[32:04] Residuals from manufacturing—some people are really worried about these. They are at very, very low levels. Antibiotics already used in animals and people that have contact allergies to some of these are still given these antibiotics, and it’s not contraindicated. Vaccines are rigorously clean. We’re removing as many of these as possible. You have to have enough antigen to mount an immune response in the first place. If one, tiny bitty cell is still able to sneak in there, it’s not going to cause a long-term problem. And it’s also important to remember that your immune system is always being challenged, so just because you get a little of something in a vaccine, you’re also getting a little of something when your dog cuts its foot pad. In the broad scheme of things, these are normal. They’re not something to worry about. They’re really low on the risks. 

[33:07] That being said, we do need to discuss risks associated with vaccines, because there are risks associated with them. This is a study that looked at 1.2 million dogs at 360 hospitals over the span of two years. This is looking at vaccine reactions in the first three days, after an immune visit. Again, this is compiling data from multiple clinics, though. There was a prevalence for some breeds to react poorly to vaccines. Those included Dachshunds, Pugs, Bostons, Min Pins, Chihuahuas, Malteses, Mini Schnauzers, Jack Russels, Toy Poodles, and Yorkies. Dogs that were altered (spayed or neutered) were more likely to have adverse events. Higher body weights were associated with lower levels of adverse events. The more vaccines you have, you administer per visit, increases the risk of adverse events in dogs that weigh less than 10 kilograms. Those of us who don’t use kilograms, that’s about 22 pounds. This is an example of the number of vaccines that were given per visit. This is the number of adverse events. We’re looking at these dark bars (our dogs that weigh less than 22 pounds). The more vaccines you’re giving to these small animals, the more likely they are to have a reaction. The rabies vaccine was responsible for over half of these adverse events that were found within these dogs. So, one of the things that I’ve heard is that small dogs need less vaccine. To my knowledge, this has not been proven. We cannot give half a vaccine to a small dog and hope that they are protected. Vaccines are what we call dose dependent. When a vaccine goes through a clinical trial to make sure that it is safe and effective, they check multiple doses. They check one dose at 5 mgs/ml, and they check one dose at 10 mgs/ml, and one dose at 20 mgs/ml. While some animals may respond to that 5 mgs/ml, not all of them do. So it is important to give enough of that antigen that we’re able to mount a proper immune response. Again, think about every day. We’re in contact with all sorts of bacteria and viruses, fungi; we’re always in contact with them. If you get one or two or three of whatever that virus is, you don’t mount a really good immune response. Your innate cells come in, they’re like we don’t know what that is; let’s kill it, they kill it, and we’re done. They aren’t actually mounting an immune response. It’s important to be able to allow the animal to mount a full immune response to generate that memory and to generate long-lasting memory. Just because a dog is physically smaller, it doesn’t mean that it can get less of a vaccine and still be covered. 

[36:34] Looking at another study: This was data done on all adverse data reported to a vaccine manufacturer or the Canadian Center for Veterinary Biology between 2010 and 2014. What these are is vaccine reactions that are reported. It is important to know that all reactions are reported, regardless of whether or not they may be directly related to the vaccine. People may choose to associate: My dog got a vaccine on Monday and had diarrhea on Tuesday. But maybe it ate an entire bag of cat food. Something could’ve happened in there; these results still have to be reported as is. We don’t know with this data how many vaccines were administered and which vaccines they were. Most of the common reactions were allergic reactions, so things that they consider allergic include things like raised and reddened skin and swelling at the injection site. Dogs that had had allergic reactions were more likely to develop neurological symptoms. There’s likely some predisposition to affect vaccine reactions. However, looking at this, we need to consider that a lot of these things are normal responses to an immune response, right? Developing redness at the skin is normal. If you cut your skin, you get a paper cut, it turns red. That’s part of mounting a normal immune response. You have pain where you’ve cut your skin. You have fever when you get sick. These are normal immune responses and shouldn’t necessarily be considered vaccine reactions, such as the same level as having anaphylaxis. It’s important to think about feeling run down—it’s normal. Having redness, swelling, things like this—these are all normal responses to having your immune system challenged. 

[39:00] Given all that, are there alternatives? Nosodes—people talk about them—there is no high quality, peer reviewed evidence of immunity generated from them. Additionally, eating and digesting things is not a great way to build immunity. Think about it. Your body learns to tolerate food; otherwise, you’d be reacting to everything. By eating something, it’s not a good way to develop a robust immune response. The exception to this are things that are mucosally associated diseases. For example, we give bordetella intranasally because you inhale bordetella, so it’s important to mount an immune response nasally. That makes sense. However, there are only specific things that we can generate immunity to that way, and they have to be manufactured a specific way. Additionally, there’s always the choice of natural immunity. I can let my puppy get this infection. This is dangerous and risky for most of our infections that we’re preventing against. Exposing your puppy to parvo and distemper is lethal. These are not things that we can do. You can’t generate natural immunity to rabies. It’s just lethal. These are not the way to go about it. I definitely encourage you to be using vaccines and to be protecting your animals that way. 

[40:38] This is my last slide, and this is just going to be a quick summary. How can we reduce risks with vaccinations? The first thing is going to be selecting a vaccination schedule for your locations and risks to your dog. We have another seminar coming up on February 18th, when I’m going to talk about the common diseases and how to build your protocol specifically so you can build a vaccination schedule with the least amount of risk. Some high-risk breeds need special monitoring, so this is per Dr. Dodds—you guys can go through the list. You guys have to make choices about how you handle your vaccines in your dogs. It is also responsible for breeders to consider removing poor or non-responders from the gene pool, so dogs that have huge responses to vaccines or dogs that are unable to respond to vaccines—should those genetics be passed on? That’s obviously up to the breeder. You can use titers and nomographs to determine when you need to actually vaccinate. If you are particularly worried, you can always consider thimerosal-free vaccines for your dogs. 

[41:52] With that, I will take any questions.

Dr. Judi Stella [41:55] Thanks, Trisha! That was great. We do have some questions. Let me see if I can go through some of these. We had a question: Is antigen and antibody the same thing? Somebody had said that they hear those words used interchangeably. Can you answer that?

Dr. Trisha Rettig [42:16] Sure! Hold on one second! I have an image for this. This is an antibody. It is able to bind an antigen. So, this little red piece here is an antigen. What the antibody is able to do is bind to the specific antigen, so this gives you the idea that this could be part of a cell, right? This is the outside of a virus. They’re binding to the specific part. Antibodies are separate from antigens but they interact. My little keychain. 

Dr. Judi Stella [43:00] Juliet wanted to know: Do you ever see a big drop in titer numbers over time? 

Dr. Trisha Rettig [43:10] You should not. There’s the theory and then the real world. You shouldn’t be seeing this. Antibodies and cellular immunity tend to decay at a pretty steady rate. However, you should be titering your dogs on a regular basis. I believe the current suggestion is three years. You can definitely go shorter than that. Titers are not that expensive anymore. You can monitor that in your dogs, too. 

Dr. Judi Stella [43:45] We had a question from Linda: My puppy was vaccinated against parvo and distemper at 6 and 8 weeks yet contracted parvo at 10 weeks and died. What went wrong?

Dr. Trisha Rettig [43:52] So that is likely associated with those nomographs. We can go back to it. Here is your loss of maternal protection. Your puppy is not able to be protected against these things. This is what happens somewhere between 8 weeks and 10 weeks. Your puppy cannot mount a proper immune response to parvo. They weren’t able to do that. If we vaccinated at 6 weeks, if we vaccinated at 8 weeks, mom’s antibody levels are too high. What happens is mom’s antibodies come in and bind to the vaccine and are able to basically wipe it out of the system. So the puppy was never able to mount a proper immune response. 

[44:54] And that’s why these nomographs are so important. For some dogs, these go out even further. They’ve lost their protection from mom but haven’t lost it enough to mount a proper immune response. That’s why these nomographs are absolutely vital to making sure that your puppies are protected. 

Dr. Judi Stella [45:11] And then you recommend that, when you vaccinate your puppy, even if it’s at the right time, you do a titer test, just to make sure that they got what they needed and that they don’t need a booster?

Dr. Trisha Rettig [45:23] That’s what Hubble’s is here. He was vaccinated at 7 weeks, per his nomograph. And then this is his check a couple of weeks later. You vaccinate, and then you can check again two weeks later and make sure that they mounted a proper immune response. 

Dr. Judi Stella [45:45] We have another question: If your dog is vaccinated for parvo and they contract it, will the infection be less severe or is it the same regardless of previous vaccination?

Dr. Trisha Rettig [45:53] I believe with the parvo vaccine, it’s what they call sterilizing immunity. You don’t get it. There are some vaccines out there, especially in humans (a good example of this is flu vaccine)—you get it, but it’s not as bad. The canine influenza vaccine, I believe, is the same way. It doesn’t prevent you from getting it necessarily; it may, but it also makes the symptoms less bad. Parvo, I believe, is one of them where you just don’t get symptoms, but it also depends on the vaccine and the infection. 

Dr. Judi Stella [46:30] I think following up on the antigen/antibody: Being positive for antigen means you are positive for antibodies as well, because they have to interact with one another? Does the presence of one mean the presence of the other? 

Dr. Trisha Rettig [46:46] We don’t test antigens. Antigens are what you’re getting in the immune response. When you, for example, get vaccinated this first time, your antigen numbers would fall off right about here, because your body is building a response to it. When they build that response, they clear antigen from the body. What we’re measuring is antibody. Antibody is what is produced and circulated throughout the blood to help prevent you from getting that infection again. We’re clearing out antigen when we clear out the virus or the bacteria. When we’re testing, we’re testing only for antibodies. I hope that makes sense. They’re so close together. I don’t know why scientists do this all the time. 

Dr. Judi Stella [47:35] When should bitches be titered? How long before delivery is informative? I think that’s talking about the nomographs. My understanding is two weeks before whelping is optimal. 

Dr. Trisha Rettig [47:45] Two weeks before or two weeks after. But definitely check out the websites Avidog and CAVIDS. Make sure that that’s accurate. You can talk to them and make sure that that’s true. 

Dr. Judi Stella [48:00] For everybody that’s listening that wants more information on the nomographs, we do have a Facebook Live recording with Gayle Watkins, who is pretty knowledgeable about nomographs. We can provide a link to that when we send out the follow-up email, as well as the link for CAVIDS and the Avidog booklet, if you are all interested. 

Dr. Trisha Rettig [48:21] I have watched the webinar that they did, and it is lovely. I highly suggest that you guys buy it.

Dr. Judi Stella [48:30] What are your thoughts on puppies getting NeoPar at 4 weeks of age? Is it a waste and a stress on the puppies? 

Dr. Trisha Rettig [48:37] Some of this depends on what you’ve got going on in your life. If you live in a place where you have endemic parvo, and you know it, how you’re going to handle this is different. But these nomographs are just the way to go. At 4 weeks, my guess is that your puppy can’t mount an immune response. However, if you have rampant parvo in your area, perhaps you do need to do that. This is where you need to work with your vet and work with the people that know you and your area and your dogs and your puppies the best. For example, vaccinating at 4 weeks here isn’t going to do anything for parvo in this specific case. It may work for some dogs. It may not. This is the value of these nomographs and why they’re so important. And for $50, it is the cheapest thing that you will do for your puppies. 

Dr. Judi Stella [49:43] We have a couple of questions about lepto, but I think I’m going to leave those for the next talk because you do go into depth about lepto. Join us on February 18th at noon, and we’ll get into the lepto conversation then. A couple of people have been asking about finding titers because their veterinarians are charging a lot of money for titers. I’m sure we can get a list of labs that will do them as well, but the University of Wisconsin is a good one, and they’re relatively inexpensive. 

Dr. Trisha Rettig [50:19] This top one—this is UW-Wisconsin. This one was sent to MSU because this dog was having other blood work done at the same time. There’s multiple ways to get titers. Both of these, I am personally sending. My vet is not sending. They tell you what you want. I think both of these are 2 mls of serum. I tell my vet what I want. My vet, they charge me for the draw, they charge me for the spindown, and I take it and I send it. But each specific testing facility will have its own options. That being said, if you nomograph, you should be sending your puppy response to CAVIDS, so they can track it. They’re tracking—here was Paige, here’s Hubble. That way they know that I’m building a response to my specific dog. There’s a number of places to do them now, easily. 

Dr. Judi Stella [51:27] Somebody asked: Do you nomograph for every litter? That would be yes, because you want to know where the bitch is. Obviously, it directly impacts the puppies. 

Dr. Trisha Rettig [51:40] They can have a response, right? You can have a bitch at two, has a fairly normal dilution ratio, but at two and a half, she was exposed to parvo. Because she was vaccinated, you never knew, and then you go on to do your next litter at three and her parvo titer is through the roof! The only way to know is to do that nomograph when you’re breeding that bitch. 

Dr. Judi Stella [52:08] Somebody’s asking how long before breeding a bitch should she be titered or possibly vaccinated before the breeding to ensure that she has sufficient maternal antibodies? 

Dr. Trisha Rettig [52:20] This is a careful place, right? If you vaccinate your bitch right before she comes into season or something like that, your bitch’s titers are going to be sky high, which means that your puppies are going to have to wait longer to be vaccinated. It would be better if your bitch is due for something that’s not required by law (rabies is its own thing), but if you’re picking something that’s not required by law, it would be better to do it as far away from your breeding and whelping as you can while maintaining your bitch’s protection. That’s part of why you can do these nomographs and you’re getting your own bitch’s titers. If you’re breeding every year, you can see where your own bitch’s titer is, and if it’s starting to get low, you can be like, “Alright, I need to keep an eye on it. Let’s figure out where it is at the next breeding.” 

Dr. Judi Stella [53:19] This is interesting, because I’m always curious about this, too: Can you discuss non-responders to vaccines? 

Dr. Trisha Rettig [53:23] Right. I get this question a lot. I do not have non-responder breeds. Not really 100% about it. But, speaking as an immunologist, there seem to be two types of non-responders. There are poor responders; the first time you give them the vaccine, they just don’t respond. Maybe the second time you give them the vaccine, they still just don’t respond. This is why titers are important. This is why we need to follow up after we vaccinate. I know Dr. Laurie at U Wisconsin-Madison has been doing some work with these poor responders and using some different ways of doing the vaccinations to be able to get protection. Those dogs are poor responders. Eventually, they mount an immune response. There are also non-responders. So, non-responders are animals that, no matter how many times you vaccinate them, they will not mount an immune response. This is likely to do with something that’s called DLA in dogs. It’s dog leukocyte antigen. What it has to do with is how our cells present the antigen to the other cells. So there’s a bunch of different ways that our bodies present antigens to other cells, which activate and talk with the adaptive immune cells. If your body cannot present part of the antigen properly because of your DLAs in dogs, you will never respond to that. That is fully genetic. That being said, I don’t know if in dogs, they have specifically isolated which genetics are associated with that. My personal opinion would be to remove non-responders from the gene pool, because those dogs cannot be protected. It is also likely that those dogs also would not respond to a wild challenge. If they found parvo in the wild, they may not be able to mount an immune response in the first place. Parvo is fairly lethal. It’s not something we want our dogs to get. This isn’t kennel cough, like they just don’t feel good. Parvo is lethal. If you have a non-responder to parvo and it finds parvo out in the wild, that is a lethal situation. That’s the immunologist’s point of view, without a non-responder breed, on non-responders. 

Dr. Judi Stella [56:02] Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. For everybody who has questions on nomographs, we’re going to get you more information. If you still have questions, you can email me. My email is judi@gooddog.com, or you can just email help@gooddog.com. I will be sure to answer your questions or find out the answers for you. For everybody else that was asking about specific diseases—I know there were lots of questions about lepto and lepto is a different and interesting one, since there are so many serovars and it’s bacterial and it’s just a whole different—but we will discuss that in our follow-up webinar on February 18th, so we hope that you will all join us for that. But thank you again, Trisha, for doing this for us.

Dr. Trisha Rettig [56:51] Thank you for having me.