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Originally Posted by debelm2  Please excuse my ignorance but does titiered mean they are checking to see if the dog still has the immunity from the vaccination? If so, can anyone tell me how much it costs to have that done? |
Titers have a place but they don't tell the whole picture. After administering a vaccine wait about 10 days and the vet can do a titer. It will show if antibodies are present which will indicated a positive response to the vaccine......That it produced antibodies.....
A "titer" is a measurement of how much antibody to a certain virus (or other antigen) is circulating in the blood at that moment. A titer test does not and cannot measure immunity, because immunity to specific viruses is reliant not on antibodies, but on memory cells, which we have no way to measure. Memory cells are what prompt the immune system to create antibodies and dispatch them to an infection caused by the virus it "remembers." Memory cells don't need "reminders" in the form of re-vaccination to keep producing antibodies.
So if you do a titer in a year or so and it's showing a "low" level of antibodies it in no way means the dog it not protected. Titers do not take into account memory cells......