04/28/06 West Nile Horse Vaccination

West Nile vaccination for horses. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. West Nile is a virus carried by mosquitoes that affects people, horses and many types of birds. Scientists do not believe the virus is spread from person to person or from animal to person. Mosquitoes get infected when they feed on an infected bird. The Washington State veterinarian Dr. Leonard Eldridge is urging horse owners to vaccinate their horses against WNV as soon as possible. ELDRIDGE: If you look at how West Nile has progressed across the country from 1999 on, it has progressed slowly across each year farther. Last year it worked right up to the bottom of Washington. We had one case in Washington that was a resident horse. We had a couple of cases that were imported out of California, but we had the one case. And if you look at how it spread, it spread by the bird population and the infectivity that way so the odds are that we're going to see some cases this year. And the odds are that we're going to see it earlier than last year if you look at how it's progressed. So with that in mind we need to be thinking about protection of the animals we can protect and of course we have a horse vaccine. And the two things you consider is vaccination and mosquito control in way of protection of West Nile. Dr. Eldridge discusses the complications of West Nile. ELDRIDGE: In people it can be anywhere from a headache and not feeling well, kind of flu like symptoms for a few days and be gone to actually un-coordination, central nervous system signs and things like this. And we think that in the horse it's a similar deal. Now what we're seeing in the horse is central nervous system signs, anywhere from kind of weakness, un-coordination to actual recumbency in the signs and symptoms that we see. And of course those that are severe, a lot of those don't recover. And we also feel that the protection from the vaccination, we've looked at that and you are somewhere near 90% which is pretty good. WNV is fatal in 30 to 40 percent of all horses that contract it, although most horses do not become ill and show no symptoms at all. Eldridge urges horse owners to work with their veterinarians for advice on WNV. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.