New Strangles Vet Practice Toolkit Launched By Dechra
2 years ago 
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Dechra Veterinary Products has launched a new strangles toolkit packed full of resources to support veterinary practices wanting to talk to their clients about this important disease and how to help control it with vaccination.
The toolkit is designed to support the company’s innovative protein-based strangles vaccine for horses and ponies, Strangvac®. It will help veterinary professionals advise and educate their clients on strangles and the important role of vaccination alongside good stable management and biosecurity procedures in improving herd immunity and thereby reducing the number of cases in the equine population.
The pack contains:
- Ready-to use social media posts for Facebook and Twitter ensuring that vet practices can create compelling and eye-catching content for their clients
- Practice newsletter and website content
- Videos on strangles pathogenesis and biosecurity
- Client evening invitations
- Strangles VetEq note featuring comprehensive information on strangles
- Images of horses with strangles abscesses
- Link to the Decha strangles therapy area webpage
All the resources are in an easy-to-use format and are interchangeable. For example, the social media posts can be linked to strangles content on a practice website or, alternatively, through to Dechra’s website www.dechra.co.uk/equine/vaccines.
Emma Jennings, equine brand manager at Dechra, comments: “The easy-to-use strangles practice toolkit contains online and offline resources for vet practices to raise awareness of strangles and the importance of vaccination, alongside good stable management and biosecurity measures, to help improve herd immunity and reduce the number of strangles’ cases.”
Strangvac is the first and only intramuscular vaccine to help protect against strangles. It contains recombinant proteins CCE, Eq85 and IdeE from Streptococcus equi and features DIVA (Differentiating Infected from Vaccinated Animals) capability. The vaccine contains no live bacteria or bacterial DNA, so will not trigger positive culture or PCR tests, a key feature in outbreak management. The proteins used in Strangvac are not the same as those used for iELISA testing methods and therefore animals will not test positive via blood test.
Trials demonstrate that Strangvac can protect more than 94 per cent of horses1, reducing the clinical signs of strangles including a high temperature, coughing, inappetence, difficulty swallowing and changes in demeanour, while also reducing the number of lymph node abscesses. It can be given to foals from five months of age and two injections should be given at a four-week interval. Horses at high risk of Streptococcus equi infection, such as those in livery, should be revaccinated after two months. Based on measured antibody titres, immunological memory was found in horses following repeated vaccination six months after primary vaccination.
For further information on the strangles practice toolkit or the Strangvac vaccine please contact your local Dechra equine sales manager.
Reference
- Robinson et al, 2020, Vaccine
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