I was thrilled to find out this morning that my dog Riley passed his OIE-FAVN rabies blood test on the second try, meaning that YES! he can come to Hawaii. At $200 per test, this was not a trivial thing. If he had passed the first time, it would not only have saved me the $200 for the second test, but also 21 more days in quarantine at $30/day.
Why did he fail the first time? What exactly is the OIE-FAVN rabies blood test? I had to find out more.
After a little online searching (okay, more than a little - this info took a bit of digging), I found out that OIE stands for Office International des Epizooties, which is the World Organization for Animal Health, an "intergovernmental organization responsible for improving animal health worldwide."
The FAVN is the Fluorescent Antibody Virus Neutralization test. Apparently, even if an animal is infected with rabies, the rabies antibodies are not so easily detected. So the FAVN test was developed in which a sample of the animal's blood is combined with a known dose of rabies. If the animal is effectively vaccinated, the antibodies in the blood sample will reduce the infectivity (neutralize) the rabies virus in the test. A fluorescent marker is used which binds to the antibodies and gives a visible sign of the neutralization. So there you have it. I would have been happy to provide a link to this information if only I had been able to find it all in one place.
So why did Riley fail his first test? He was due for his vaccine, and they drew the blood for the test before he was re-vaccinated. So his antibody level was too low for him to pass the test. When I had him re-tested two weeks later, the vaccine had stimulated his antibody production and he was A-OK.
What a relief. I was starting to worry that Riley was on his way to becoming another Cujo.
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