FIRST VACCINE FOR CAT AIDS APPROVED FOR VETERINARY USE

The first vaccine for feline immunodeficiency virus was approved for
commercial production and veterinary use today by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture. The patented vaccine for this disease, which is a
cat form of AIDS, has been licensed for manufacture to Fort Dodge
Animal Health, a division of Wyeth. Patents for the vaccine are held
by the University of California and the University of Florida. The
vaccine should be available to veterinarians by this summer.

"This vaccine offers the first effective protection for cats against
this often fatal disease," said Niels Pedersen, director of the
Center for Companion Animal Health and an international authority on
retroviruses and immunologic disorders of small animals. "The
success of the FIV vaccine also offers hope that eventually a vaccine
will be developed that will effectively protect against AIDS in
humans."

The newly approved vaccine is known as a "killed vaccine," made from
an inactivated form of the FIV virus itself. The vaccine stimulates
the protective immune response in the animal's body without the
danger of inadvertently causing the viral disease. The new vaccine is
composed of virus strains from two different types of FIV, one from
North America and one from Asia. In a study demonstrating the
efficacy of the vaccine, cats received three doses of the FIV vaccine
and a year later were exposed to a different strain of the virus.
Sixty-seven percent of the vaccinated cats were protected against the
virus, while 74 percent of the non-vaccinated cats became infected
with FIV. Studies indicate that the vaccine provides protection
against FIV for at least 12 months.

Posted on SHARE Yahoo group - Apr. 6, 2002

Info from University of California, Davis