TITRE TESTING

What's a Titre?

A titer (pronounced “tighter”) is simply a measure of antibodies in a creature’s blood. If they’ve made antibodies to something, it means Sadie has responded to a challenge and mounted an immune response. Her immune system “saw” that foreigner and responded.  Bravo!  That’ll show up in her blood in a titer test measuring how much antibody is present in a volume of blood.

A healthy animal with a healthy immune system will make a titer after two kinds of exposure to a foreign agent, like a virus:
• Natural exposure
• Vaccination
Natural exposure could be from your dog sniffing around the dog park after a parvo virus-laden stool was left behind.

Vaccination is the injection (or sometimes, inhalation) of a foreign virus or bacterial toxin into Sadie’s body. It’s given with the hope that immunization follows.

Immunization means yes, your dog or cat or horse or YOU made a reasonable immune response to a foreigner and she’s now immune to that thing. A positive titer tells you immunization happened. 

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Not all natural exposure or vaccination results in immunization

Wait. Why not?

• Maybe the dog park was simply free of parvovirus that day you went.

• Maybe that tick didn’t carry Borrelia spirochetes.

• Or that vaccine had been stored poorly or was long out of date.

• Or your animal’s immune system was compromised to the point where response to foreigners is minimal to none. She’s a “non-responder.”

This is where a titer can be very useful. Did Sadie make some immune response to what ever her challenge was?

A titer can answer that question.

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