Vaccine Trials 2008 - Breaking
News!
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The Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) has just agreed that
the 2007 trial can be continued throughout 2008. This means that
all those whose horses and ponies participated in last year's
trial can, if the owner wishes, continue to feed capsules from
now until the end of the Sweet Itch season.
Please Note - The VMD licence applies ONLY to equines resident
in the UK - and sadly no new candidates can be accepted.
Owners will be provided with 30 capsules to feed at the rate
of one a fortnight.
The capsule pack, which includes instructions and a 2008 Owner's
Assessment Form, will be sent directly to owners - there are no
priming injections this year as this is a continuation of the
2007 trial.
The cost is £200 plus VAT (total £235).The capsules
are packed and ready now for first class despatch. Simply contact
us by phone, with your credit card details, and we will process
your order immediately……BUT , as always, the purpose
of the trial is to gain vital feedback for Prof Stanford and his
team at BioEos. If you think that you may not get round to completing
and returning the Assessment Form to us by the end of November
we would much prefer that you did not take part. To achieve meaningful
results we need ALL the forms back - please!
Jennifer Greaves
National Sweet Itch Centre.
New Sweet Itch Vaccine Trial: 2007
The 2007 Sweet-Itch Vaccine trial will probably be the final
and most important one. Recruitment was carried out early this
year, with over 500 horses and ponies participating. Once again
three initial injections were given two weeks apart and administered
by a Vet. Thereafter owners are feeding a small capsule to their
horse every two weeks until the end of the Sweet Itch season.
Results from this trial will be known at the beginning of 2008
and will be published on this web site - so watch this space!
(Jennifer Greaves, The National Sweet Itch Centre)
Update on progress with the treatment
of Sweet Itch - click here
2007 Vaccine Trials diary card -
click here to download
Sweet Itch Vaccine Trials thesis
- click here to download
THE 2007 OPEN TRIAL OF THE BIOEOS "VACCINE" AGAINST
SWEET-ITCH
This year some 500 horses were entered in the open trial. Thank
you to all owners and horses for entering. We hope that this will
be the last such trial before the reagent goes on to the market.
It is very important that you complete the "Owners assessment
form" if everyone's work is to come to a successful conclusion.
In case you have lost your form, there is an attachment (A) to
this message that you can download.
We know that not all horses react in the same way - some will
have had dramatic improvement with the treatment, many will have
shown a useful but incomplete response and a few will have shown
no response at all. We apologize to this last group but do not
give up hope; there is significant data showing that horses who
fail to respond the first year may do so in a second year.
The Good Clinical Practice (GCP) Trials
Three of these randomised, blinded and placebo controlled trials
have been performed and these are the ones that should lead to
a licence for the reagent. The first was carried out in 2005 around
Totnes in Devon, and this showed some statistical significance
encouraging us to continue. Two larger trials were carried out
in 2006. One of these, in which horses received up to ten injections,
has produced strongly positive results, which are summarised in
the diagram below.
Mean integrated lesion scores - by date
Differences between the red line, placebo recipient horses and
the blue line, horses receiving the active treatment are obvious.
The reduction in sweet-itch was statistically significant at 8,
12, 16 and 20 weeks - that is throughout the season.
The other GCP trial, of three injections and up to 7 oral capsules
is still being analysed.
Ruth Barnett
The 2006 open trial was the subject of Ruth Barnett's BSc thesis
and we are glad to say that Ruth obtained first-class honours
in her degree and her thesis itself was granted first-class status
(this can also be downloaded as attachment B). Although Ruth has
not been able to take an active part in the 2007 trial, she has
kindly agreed to examine and help analyse the data.
You can see from the conclusions of Ruth's thesis that although
only 4% of horses were completely cured, sweet-itch was reduced
in severity in nearly 70% of horses and more than 70% of owners
considered the treatment to be effective. You can also see from
the limitations reported in the thesis that we have not yet found
the optimal way of using the new treatment, and this has been
further addressed during 2007.
Other diseases that might be affected
Since the "vaccine" is really a modulator of the immune
system, a number of other equine diseases could be influenced
by it. These include COPD or heaves, equine sarcoid (we already
have some data suggesting that these are improved) and melanoma.
If your horse suffers from any of these, your observations would
be very useful. Also, any other disease that your horse may have
might have been influenced by the treatment and we would be very
pleased to hear about it.
Please e-mail Professor
Stanford on johnls@dircon.co.uk
with your observations..
Update on progress with the treatment
of Sweet Itch - click here
2007 Vaccine Trials diary card -
click here to download
Sweet Itch Vaccine Trials thesis
- click here to download
