| Elephants can be Protected against Rabies Rabies is a deadly disease of most warm-blooded animals with no treatment. Prophylactic vaccine schedule for domestic animals are in vogue. Often veterinarians are confronted with the problem of prophylactic vaccination schedule for elephants especially during rabies out break. The dose is fixed for each taxonomical species after finding out the titre after a series of vaccinations. Naturally, this has not been done for most of the zoo animals. For zoo animals, rabies is not very important either since these animals are usually protected from the rabid animals in their safe enclosures. Recently an out break of rabies in a zoo gave opportunity for the scientists to test rabies vaccine in exotic animals and the scientists of University of Florida has come out with a finding. Their findings appear to be interesting and very useful for veterinarians in elephant range countries where rabies is very common in animals. Elephant rabies is also not uncommon in these countries. A trial was conducted to evaluate the humoral immune response of Asian elephants to a primary IM vaccination of either 1 or 2 doses of a commercially available inactivated rabies virus vaccine. Sixteen captive Asian elephants were selected with no known prior rabies vaccination history. They were divided into two groups of 8 each. Group 1 was received 1 dose of vaccine and the group 2 was received 2 doses of vaccine 9 days apart. All elephants were injected with one or two 4-ml injections of a monovalent inactivated rabies virus vaccine. Blood samples were collected prior to injection and then on days 9,35,112, and 344. Further all elephants were given booster dose after 40 days after the booster dose was give i.e. at day 384. Serum was tested using virus neutralization test using rapid fluorescent focus inhibition test. Results revealed very interesting data. All the elephants were seronegative prior to vaccination. After vaccination both groups showed very encouraging results, indicating that Asian elephants develop humoral immune response after vaccination with a commercially available monovalent inactivates rabies vaccine. This suggests that a rabies vaccination programme can be instituted to elephants that are likely to come in contact with rabid dogs, as is the case in most elephant range countries. A 2-dose series of rabies virus vaccine should provide an adequate antibody response in elephants, and an annual booster would maintain the antibody response in this species. November 2006 |
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