In recognition of vaccines’ role in controlling equine disease the Equine Veterinary Journal (EVJ) has produced a special collection of articles on equine vaccine research, available free online.

Vaccination involves administering a biological preparation that stimulates the immune system to fight a specific disease and recognize and destroy it in any further encounters. It is the most effective method for controlling infectious diseases in humans and animals.

Guest edited by Janet Daly, BSc, PhD, associate professor of emergent viruses at the University of Nottingham’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, in Leicestershire, U.K., and Pablo Murcia, DVM, PhD, MSc, EVJ’s Latin American Editor who is based at the University of Glasgow College of Medical, Veterinary, and Life Sciences’ Institute of Infection, Immunity, and Inflammation, in Scotland, the collection covers aspects of controlling equine influenza, immunology in young horses, and herd immunity.

The first inactivated virus vaccines for equine influenza became available in the late 1960s and there are now several licensed vaccines for horses. The protection induced by an equine influenza vaccine depends on the antigenic relatedness of the strain(s) included in the vaccine to circulating strains encountered by horses. However, a vaccine containing a mismatched strain can still limit clinical signs of disease. In the paper “What can mathematical models bring to the control of equine influenza?” Daly and collaborators confirmed that because a mismatched vaccine is poor at suppressing virus replication and shedding, the likelihood of a large outbreak occurring increases