Nobivac L4 injection

[CJ201]

Hi I hope someone can put my mind at rest please because I'm really worrying.

I have a 12 week old puppy, the breeder took him to the vet for his 8 week jab and he was given Nobivac L2. Fast forward 4 weeks and DH and I took him do his 12 week jab. It was a crazy consultation! Pup was wriggling about and going crazy and the vet was talking at about hundred miles an hour.

Vet checks his health record, sees he's had L2 and then starts talking about L4, explaining that the surgery is phasing out L2 and advised that he should have L4, 'but it's up to you of course!'

DH then says to her 'well why wouldn't we have L4, if it offers more protection?' She then said there was a bit of controversy about it a few years ago but she seemed to dismiss it. We are first time pet owners and want our boy to be kept safe, vet said L4 was best option so we went for it.

We get home and start googling and now I'm worried sick. Lots of animals have died or become seriously ill. What have we done?? He's due to go back in 4 weeks for a booster jab, should we take him back for it? Can we swap to a safer vaccine in the future?

Can someone please advise, thank you.

[BiteyShark]

My dog has had L4 every year (3 times now) and he has been fine.

Animal vaccines seem to be just like child ones regarding controversy.

If mine doesn't develop any reactions then I will continue to give him L4 each year as I think the benefits far outweigh risks for me.

[missbattenburg]

I understand that:

Lepto 2 guards against 2 strains of lepto
Lepto 4 guards against those same 2 strains plus 2 more strains that are present in the UK but not very common

Your pup has had
a) an original L2 vac
b) a L4 vac which would both act as a bootser for the 2 older strains but also a first vacc for the 2 new strains.

Logic would say you are now fully vaccinated against L2 strains but not quite covered against L4 ones. So could:

• accept the protection you have against L2 strains and stop here
• want additional potection against the L4 strains and have the booster

Though do check all the above with your vet. If you don't feel 100% comfortable with your vet then find another.

[Jouska]

Tbh Leptospira has over 250 pathogenic serovars and many different strains within each serovars. Although at the moment it is thought that only 8 affect dogs but then again only 2 strains are commonly found in the UK.

Dogs can and do get Lepto even having the vaccination personally I do not use L4. No scientific reason just what I have experienced personally.

You can research your area to see which strains are around and if L4 is a good idea for you or not.

Unfortunately the drug companies are not very transparent with the side effects so we do not have any strong evidence to work with. Although it is known that the drug companies will often refuse to accept evidence from owners.

Ironcially the only dogs (2) that I have heard off that have died of Lepto had the Lept 4 injection but again that is anecdotal and may be area specific.

[SkeletonSkins]

To be honest, it seems like a bit of a con to me that means you end up paying for an extra jab. Our puppy had Nobivac L2 at 8 weeks and 10 weeks and was done. It seems like they’ve started all over again and disregarded that first jab?

[threemilesupthreemilesdown]

The anti-vax nonsense transcends species. Step away from Google!

[adaline]

We've had Lepto4 each time and he's been fine - if you google enough you'll find scare stories about everything!

Ultimately it's your choice but we live in an area with a fair amount of lepto so we wanted to get the jab that offered the most protection.

[ntw123]

I apologise for jumping on this thread. We took our healthy 7 year old dog for vaccination due to rats in the area. They gave him nobivac dhp and l4. And because he hadn't been to the vets for a few years, it was restarting his vaccinations.... he got another l4 4 weeks later.
Two weeks later he is dead.
The wordings that the vets used were contradictory (depending on which vet). Has he had access to rodenticide? Another vet saying it's not that due to colouring of gums.
However the following were mentioned. Severely low platelet levels. And the following "immune-mediated haemolytic anaemia" and " immune-mediated thrombocytopenia".
There is all this current talk of covid 19 AstraZeneca vaccine causing " immune-mediated thrombocytopenia," blood clots. And haemorrhaging. They suggest 1:650000 people.
The European medicines advisory website indicates our dogs reaction was 1:10000.
Now get this, the vet had "never heard of the vaccine causing this".
However, it appears concerns /reports were already being raised (and hushed by the bva) in 2016 - daily telegraph and daily mail reports on 2000+ reactions.
There is always a risk to a vaccine which is meant to protect.... you would expect the risk in someone orma pet with underlying conditions. But healthy men and women, and healthy pets are dying from vaccines. But no.. vets (and doctors) look the other way, and go "but...they must have had an underlying condition".
It's a Russian roulette lottery.
Btw, I've now realised leptospirosis vaccine is more or less useless. So I feel like ive killed my own dog by asking the vets to vaccinate him. And i dont know how i can live with that.

[PermanentlyDizzy]

@ntw123. I am so very sorry for your loss. I lost my boy to Immune Mediated Thrombocytopenia last year, after a year+ long battle with it.

It’s isn’t good that your vet didn’t know vaccinations can cause IMHA or IMT, but it’s not uncommon, it’s quite a specialist area that needs input from an Internal Veterinary Medicine Specialist, precisely because it’s not common enough for a lot of vets to have seen it happen. Both conditions together are known as Evans Syndrome and are really hard to overcome. My vet didn’t know what was happening to my dog, but we live ten minutes from a fantastic veterinary hospital, that has a leading expert in these conditions and they knew straight away. My boy made a good initial recovery, thanks to the specialist care and state of the art treatment, but was ultimately refractory to the longer-term treatment, was unable to wean off the meds without relapsing and we couldn’t save him.

The fact is, ANY vaccination, by virtue of triggering an immune response can cause these horrible conditions and they can be caused by all sorts of other things as well. Sometimes they can’t identify a trigger and it’s considered idiopathic. It’s not just L4, although I know that particular one is controversial due to higher than usual reports of adverse reactions, so has had greater publicity online, etc.

Please don’t blame yourself. You did what you felt was best for him. Most people vaccinate every year with no problems at all. No-one could have predicted the outcome and the 2000+ reactions that were reported will have included minor reactions, as well as more serious ones like IMHA/IMT.

I am not sure if you feel it might help, but there is an excellent IMHA/IMT in dogs support group on FB. Lots of people there, including me, have lost their dogs to these horrendous conditions and it might help to talk it through with people that have a high level of understanding and awareness about them.

Despite being aware of the potential risks for an autoimmune reaction, I will still vaccinate my dogs, as diseases like Parvo are on the increase, thanks to the rise in puppy farming and imported puppies with fake papers and health records. There’s also been massive increase in rats in suburban environments since the pandemic, potentially making Lepto a bigger issue. (We ended up with them ourselves in Spring this year, for the first time since we moved here 20 years ago.) I will probably do initial courses and then titre test from there. I’ve had dogs for over 30 years, all have been fully vaccinated (including L4) only one has developed a serious auto-immune condition and that wasn’t vaccine related. None of the others has even had a mild reaction to any of their vaccinations.

[ntw123]

Hi, thanks for your comment. It wasnt just the one vet who "hadn't heard of that" or your shouldnt read scare stories...an emergency vet where my dog was going to stay the night shrugged it off suggesting it could have triggered an underlying cancer... with zero empathy. They are in denial. I advised the breeder of my dog and she pointed me to the old news stories and the FB group. Shes heard it all before. I still haven't heard from my regular vets a few weeks on with the final days bill, and I'm refusing to contact them. Its like they have some guilt behind it all. Just a sympathy card. I'm angry. And I dont want to add to the £k fortune a £50 vaccine has cost me.

[PermanentlyDizzy]

Oh my goodness, that’s dreadful. Different vets at my practice had heard of it and were able to support his ongoing care by liaising with the specialist, but the one on emergency duty when he was rushed in didn’t know what it was, just that it was serious.

Neoplasms can trigger IMHA/IMT but I have never heard of neoplasms being acutely triggered by vaccinations. It sounds like your vets didn’t have a clue that IMHA/IMT even exist though. That’s appalling!

Essentially it’s not common enough for every vet to have seen a case, so it’s bit like GPs vs Consultant’s/Hospital Specialists, it may not be the first thing they think of, but they should know what it is! IMHA in particular is hard to catch, unless your vets have in-house pathology. Even then the in-house pathology machines can mess up, as they did several times with my boy’s platelet counts. IMHA starts with such vague symptoms that could be any one of a number of things, so vets who’ve never seen it may work through eliminating several other diagnoses before they realise they need to refer to specialist care urgently.

Conversely, if it’s that rare, given how many dogs are vaccinated every year, on repeat, it follows that there aren’t as many cases triggered by vaccines as some online info would suggest. Ultimately we can only live our own experiences, do our own research and draw our own conclusions, other wise we end up with the usual online vaccination/anti-vax battles.

I am so sorry for what you have been through and that you lost your lovely boy. Mine had the very best of care, costing over 20K in a year (thank heavens for insurance) but still couldn’t win the battle. You really need specialists for these conditions and I know we were really lucky to live so close to a state of the art vet hospital with a specialist in them.

I would be the same about not contacting them, although a formal complaint might be in order when you have had chance to process and recover.