Protective Efficacy of the Calicivirus Valency of the Leucofeligen Vaccine against a Virulent Heterologous Challenge in Kittens.

Feline calicivirus (FCV) is a common feline pathogen with a potential for antigenic diversity. This study aimed to evaluate and characterize the protective efficacy of the FCV-F9 valency of a tetravalent vaccine, Leucofeligen, against challenge with an unrelated strain. Ten 9-week-old kittens were vaccinated while 10 remained as unvaccinated controls. The vaccinated cats received Leucofeligen twice subcutaneously with a 3-week interval. Four weeks after the second vaccination, all cats were challenged with virulent heterologous FCV and followed up for 21 days, monitoring their general condition, clinical signs, and immunological responses. During the vaccination phase, rectal temperatures and body weights were indistinguishable between the two groups. Only vaccinated cats showed FCV-specific seroconversion (both total and neutralizing antibodies). In the first week after challenge, the vaccinated cats had an 82.6% reduction in median clinical score compared to controls. Leucofeligen was thus shown to provide a significant clinical protection to kittens challenged with heterologous virulent FCV. This protection was similar whether the cats had neutralizing antibody or not, indicating a key role for cellular immunity in the overall protection. This also suggests that previously reported seroneutralisation studies may underestimate the level of cross-protection against field strains obtained with this modified live FCV-F9 vaccine.

Clinical efficacy and tolerance of miltefosine in the treatment of canine leishmaniosis.

The study was aimed to assess the efficacy and tolerance profiles of an oral administration miltefosine drug (Milteforan(R), Virbac) in dogs with natural leishmaniosis. In this multicentric open trial, 96 dogs were treated with the drug administered orally at a dose of 2 mg/kg body weight once a day for 28 days. During the 56-day trial, clinical signs of the dogs were monitored every 2 weeks. On the first and the last visits, blood and bone marrow samples were collected for laboratory analyses. According to clinical scores, the treatment demonstrated a significant time-dependent therapeutic effect resulting in a 61.2% mean reduction on day 56. Hematologic and biochemical analyses showed improvements in most of the parameters examined, supporting the observed clinical efficacy of the drug. Overall, veterinarians estimated that 82.7% of the dogs treated with the miltefosine drug showed an equal or higher treatment efficacy than other antileishmanial drugs. During the trial, the adverse reactions probably associated with the drug treatment were observed in 11.7% of the dogs. However, they were not serious. The most frequent one was vomiting, which was transient, self-limiting, and reversible. These data demonstrate that the drug, at the recommended dose and treatment regime, was safe and efficacious for the treatment of canine leishmaniosis.