The 2023 ACVIM leptospirosis consensus marks a turning point in canine care, shifting vaccination to a universal core protocol while updating diagnostic standards and shortening handling precautions.
The 2023 American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ACVIM) Consensus Statement was a major milestone for leptospirosis guidance. In this video, Jane Sykes, BVSc, DACVIM (SAIM), PhD, MPH, MBA, FNAP, lead author of the 2023 consensus statement and a professor at the University of California, Davis, discusses the most important updates contained in document, sharing why these changes were necessary for modern clinical practice. The discussion highlights a major shift in preventative care, specifically the recommendation to move leptospirosis vaccination from a lifestyle-based option to a yearly core vaccine for all dogs regardless of geography or breed. Sykes also explains how the statement updates diagnostic criteria and provides a first-of-its-kind formal case definition for the disease. Additionally, she describes the practical relief veterinarians might experience from the shortened handling protocols.
Below is a partial transcript, lightly edited for clarity.
Sykes: The 2023 ACVIM leptospirosis consensus statement update was overdue because of advances in our knowledge about the diagnosis of leptospirosis, about its epidemiology, about treatment, and very importantly, about vaccination. And there’s been a lot of changes in diagnostic tests for leptospirosis since the very first ACVIM consensus statement was published in 2010, as well as improvements in vaccines.
Some of the most important aspects of the consensus statement relate to, for example, our understanding of how leptospirosis is transmitted and the public health risk of leptospirosis. For example, when owners or veterinarians are handling dogs that are suspected to have lepto. Also, the use of point-of-care tests, which have been well integrated into many practices, more information on risk factors for leptospirosis in dogs, and then also some new recommendations for vaccination.
Perhaps the most impactful recommendation in the updated statement is that every dog should receive a leptospirosis vaccine every year. And the reason why that’s really significant is because it means that now veterinarians are moving from every-3-year core vaccination of dogs using distemper, hepatitis, parvo vaccines and rabies, to vaccinating dogs every year as core, with lepto being given every year, and then obviously DHP would still be given every third year.
We made that recommendation based on a growing amount of evidence that all dogs are at risk of leptospirosis, and that has really been based on findings that since the advent of leptospirosis vaccination and widespread leptospirosis vaccination, we are seeing lepto in primarily unvaccinated dogs that have not been vaccinated because they’ve been considered not at risk for the disease.
[These include] especially small breed dogs in urban environments, maybe geriatric dogs not being vaccinated. But what we’re finding is that we’re now seeing lepto more in those dogs. So, small breed dogs, often dogs that have just gone for walks on the street [with] no significant contact with wildlife that’s known, those are the dogs that are getting lepto. [We’re also seeing] lepto in very young puppies and in geriatric dogs, [as well as in] in every part of the country…