Feline Rabies Vaccine 101
with Dr. Lenyr Muñoz
Friends and Neighbors,
Rabies is a fatal zoonotic disease often transmitted via scratches and bite wounds. Regardless of your cat’s lifestyle, vaccination against rabies is essential. In Cook County, all cats over the age of 16 weeks are required to be vaccinated with an approved product and this must be administered by a licensed veterinarian. In compliance with Gold Standard medical care, we exclusively offer PUREVAX. Why PUREVAX? It’s the safest option for your cats! Learn more from Dr. Muñoz below!
What is PUREVAX?
PUREVAX Feline Rabies is considered an adjuvant-free vaccine for cats 12 weeks of age and older for the prevention of disease due to Rabies virus.
What is an adjuvant?
An adjuvant is added to a vaccine to stimulate the immune system and increase the effectiveness of the vaccine, however in recent years some of the vaccines carrying an adjuvant have been linked to serious vaccine reactions in cats.
How does PUREVAX benefit cats?
PUREVAX Rabies vaccine was developed using state-of-the-art technology just for cats and kittens. The vaccine delivers everything needed to induce immunity without any of the unnecessary adjuvants that have posed risk to feline patients in the past, such as injection site reactions, chronic inflammation, and sarcoma formation.
How does it work?
PUREVAX Rabies is a vaccine that works by “teaching” the immune system how to defend itself against disease. The vaccine strain in PUREVAX is a “carrier” canarypox virus that has been given a gene that makes it able to produce part of a Rabies virus called “glycoprotein G”.
When a cat is given the vaccine, the immune system recognizes the Rabies glycoprotein G as “foreign” and makes antibodies against it so the immune system can respond and protect against infection if exposed to the Rabies virus in real life.
PUREVAX offers the first and only half-mL Feline Rabies vaccine.
Recombinant canarypox-vectored vaccines contain only a portion of the genetic material of a pathogen, not the complete pathogenic organism. Therefore, there is no potential for reversion to virulence. A half-mL is half the dose of vaccine that our cats used to get, but is still effective.
Our goal is to get your cats the best and safest protection science has to offer. PUREVAX is an easy fit to all cat lifestyles, allowing compliance with feline vaccination guidelines. We hope you found these tips useful and that they help keep your pets happy and healthy. Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions you may have. We’re always here for you and your pets!
Sincerely,
The BLVD Team