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Seed Virus Safety Studies

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For seven years, Heska has been selling intraocular/intranasal feline vaccines called Trivalent and Bivalent Vaccines — manufactured by Boehringer Ingelheim (BI). Heska has received complaints about adverse events associated with these vaccines including prolonged sneezing and nasal and oral ulceration. Heska felt that these adverse events were associated with the respiratory viruses in these vaccines. Beginning in 1997, Heska began to develop replacement vaccines that would provide equivalent immunity with greater safety.

To determine if the replacement vaccines were safer, Heska performed a study comparing the results of inoculation of cats with the seed viruses used to manufacture the rhinotracheitis virus and calicivirus fractions used in each of these vaccines. Forty cats were divided into four groups of ten. Each group was inoculated with seed virus used to make the particular vaccine for which it was tested:

• Bivalent/Trivalent calicivirus
• Bivalent/Trivalent rhinotracheitis virus
• Feline UltraNasal^® calicivirus
• Feline UltraNasal^® rhinotracheitis virus

Post-inoculation, the cats were monitored for clinical signs and scored. The more severe the clinical signs, the higher the score assigned. Each cat’s scores were totaled and the mean for each treatment group was determined.

Results

Conclusion

Inoculation of cats with the seed viruses used to manufacture the Feline UltraNasal^® Vaccine produced clinical signs in fewer cats and the clinical signs were milder in the affected cats than those produced by inoculation with the Bivalent/Trivalent seed viruses.