Does vaccination against Feline Parvovirus protect hospitalized raccoon kits from clinical outbreaks of parvoviral disease?

Sammanfattning: The Northern Raccoon (Procyon lotor) belongs to the Carnivore-family and is a species endemic to North America. Every year hundreds of orphaned raccoon cubs are admitted into the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota (WRCM), a non-profit organization where all injured or orphaned wild animals are admitted and receive quality health care with the goal of being released out into the wild. The WRCM routinely vaccinate all of the admitted raccoon cubs with a killed feline panleucopenia vaccine, but despite this there are outbreaks of parvovirus infection every year where up to 50% of the admitted cubs have been euthanized or died. The objective of this study was to determine whether vaccinating the admitted raccoon kits has any significant protective effect to developing clinical parvoviral disease. A single-blinded cohort study was designed with two parallel, independent groups. One group was given a dose of killed feline parvovirus vaccine at admission, and the other group was not given any vaccination at all. Assignment to the vaccinated or unvaccinated group was on a per-litter basis and done randomly by drawing lots out of a box. A second dose of vaccine was administered to the vaccinated group after two weeks if the litter was still in-housed. In all other respects, the groups received the same treatment, handling and medical care. The two groups were housed in two different rooms of the same building. To accommodate room size, the two study groups were proportioned so that 1/3 of the study population was not vaccinated and 2/3 were vaccinated. The raccoon kits were continually assessed clinically and these observations served as the base for incidence calculations according to pre-defined criteria. The difference between the groups was calculated concerning overall disease, sickness and death/euthanasia. Two blood samples were collected from every admitted raccoon for serological testing. A total of 201 individual raccoon cubs were admitted into the WRCM mammal nursery in 2012, and served as the study population for this study. The non-vaccinated study group held 46 individuals, and the vaccinated study group consisted of 116 individuals. The results indicate that orphaned raccoon kits taken into the WRCM benefit from vaccination against FPV. Vaccinated individuals had a 0.54 relative risk of acquiring clinical parvoviral disease compared to unvaccinated individuals (p = 0.07). Serological testing for antibody titers was done for a few individuals in each study group. No significant difference was found between the vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals the regarding antibody titers.