Hi Christie,

Thank you for the information. I just skimmed the pdf, but only found one sentence on transcutaneous inoculation. It seems like this vaccine contains no adjuvent, similar to the rabies vaccine you mentioned. It appears to be generated against a (presumably) harmless virus that has been engineered to contain 3 proteins from the feline leukemia virus. This strategy supposedly reduces the possibility that live, harmful virus will infect cats as a contaminant of the vaccine. How they have studied VAS (or if they have) is not clear.

ellen

>>It is made by Merial and is called Transcutaneous Immunization. It's been in the works since 1998, and if you want your brain to explode, here is a very highly technical explanation of it:
>>
>>www.emea.eu.int/vetdocs/PDFs/EPAR/Eurifel/026600en6.pdf
>>
>>The reason there is SPECULATION that this will be safer is that one theory about what causes the high incidence of injection site sarcomas in cats is a tendency for their immune system to sort of "over-react" to injections or punctures in the skin. No one really knows if this is what causes injection site sarcomas in cats, nor if it is, what co-factors may be needed to trigger the development of the tumors.
>>
>>The last "big news" was vaccines without adjuvants, such as Merial's Purevax feline rabies vaccine (adjuvants are irritating substances added to some vaccines in the hope that the irritation will cause the immune system to respond more strongly to the vaccine), which was also supposed to cause fewer problems in cats.
>>
>>Until we really understand what triggers injection site sarcomas in cats, most of these new products and delivery systems will just be (pardon the pun) shots in the dark.
>>-----
>>Christie Keith
>>Caber Feidh Scottish Deerhounds
>>Holistic Husbandry since 1986
>>Meet the Felines!

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