Can Chemotherapy Negatively Affect the Specific Antibody Response toward Core Vaccines in Canine Cancer Patients?

Abstract

The life expectancy of our pets has been getting longer in recent years due to new therapeutic opportunities, better nutrition, and better diagnostic approaches. This positive effect, however, has been accompanied by a concomitant increase in neoplasms, particularly in canine patients. Therefore, veterinarians inevitably face new issues related to these diseases, poorly or never investigated in the past, such as the possible side effects resulting from chemotherapy. The aim of this study was to investigate whether and how chemotherapy influences the antibody response against CPV-2, CDV, and CAdV-1 in dogs vaccinated before starting chemotherapy. Twenty-one canine patients with different types of malignancies were sampled before, during, and after different chemotherapy protocols to determine their actual levels of seroprotection against CPV-2, CDV, and CadV-1 by using the in-practice test VacciCheck. Differences related to sex, breed size, type of tumor, and chemotherapy protocol were evaluated. No statistically significant changes in antibody protection emerged for any of the chemotherapy protocol used, suggesting that, contrary to expectation, chemotherapy does not have a marked immunosuppressive effect on the post-vaccine antibody response. These results, although preliminary, may be useful in improving the clinical approach to the canine cancer patient, helping veterinarians fully manage their patients, and enabling owners to feel more confident about their pets’ quality of life.

Prevalence of Serum Antibody Titers against Core Vaccine Antigens in Italian Cats

“…In our study, more than 20 cats had lymphomas or other neoplasms, and none were receiving chemotherapy; of these, the only ones partially unprotected were three unvaccinated cats. Very recently, our research group published an interesting paper on the effect of chemotherapy on core vaccination response in canine oncologic patients [85], suggesting that contrary to expectations, chemotherapy does not have a marked immunosuppressive effect on the postcore vaccine antibody response in canine cancer patients, thus helping veterinarians better manage their patients and helping owners feel more confident about their pets' life quality. It will be interesting to monitor whether such a positive result will also be maintained in canine and feline cancer patients not receiving chemotherapy (study in progress).…”

“…The use of antibody titration to estimate protection before or after a core vaccination should be the first choice of every veterinary practitioner in daily practice to properly vaccinate their patients. This has always been possible through the use of gold standard tests (HI and VN), while only in recent years have practical in-clinic tests become commercially available such as the VacciCheck, which was used in this study and in similar studies of ours when core vaccine protection in dogs was the focus [67,85,[87][88][89][90]. Antibody titer tests may be very useful for monitoring immunity specific to core vaccines through a careful interpretation of antibody titration results [67].…”