When you have a pet in your care, visits to the veterinarian are mandatory almost every year to receive a check-up and also a vaccination reminder to be completely calm about its health. However, there are some voices that already suggest that we are overvaccinating too much in our country, since applying vaccines year after year is not only unnecessary, but can pose a risk to the animal.
A new paradigm. To understand the problem, we must look at the guides of the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) and the Latin American Committee for Vaccinology in Companion Animals (COLAVAC-Iberia). Both institutions have updated their guidelines with a clear message wanting to abandon systematic vaccination schedules and opt for personalized medicine.
From groups. Now the guidelines are to differentiate vaccines into two large groups, the first being the “essential” ones, which are those for distemper, adenovirus and parvovirus in dogs, and that for panleukopenia, herpesvirus and calicivirus in cats. On the other hand, there would be non-essential ones, which would correspond to leptospirosis.
Here, science suggests that essential vaccines generate much longer immunity than we thought, making animals have defenses against these pathogens for a long time. For example, after vaccination in puppies and their first booster, the animals maintain levels of protective antibodies for at least three years, and in many cases it can last up to 9 or 14 years. This means that if we vaccinate every year we are literally ‘pouring’ immunity where there is already a good amount of it.
A legal labyrinth. If science seems to have it so clear… What is happening in Spain? Here, most of the autonomous communities only provide that the rabies vaccine is mandatory, making vaccination against parvovirus or distemper only recommended because they logically cause fatal diseases.
If we focus on figures, a recent study on national protocols highlighted a devastating fact: only 28.6% of the vaccines available for dogs and 42.9% for cats are “adequate” according to WSAVA standards. And the reason is that the industry markets combined vaccines; That is, to give the dog the annual leptospirosis vaccine, the veterinarian uses the viral one that includes parvovirus and distemper, forming overvaccination.
A personal solution. To avoid needlessly pricking the animals, what is proposed is that, instead of blindly setting a reminder, a blood test is performed to determine the amount of protective antibodies in the blood. In this case, if the animal has adequate levels, it is not vaccinated that year, and if not, it should be vaccinated.
The problem is that this is more expensive than directly giving the vaccine, so the most convenient, fastest and cheapest option is chosen.
More personal. The conclusion here is that experts point out that a booster should be applied to essential vaccines every three years, preserving the rabies vaccine, which is the only one legally required and whose deadlines comply with local legislation.
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