Dwight & Dr. Sears' Anti-Distemper Treatment

Intro

2009-01-26T08:16:00.001-08:00

This is my experience with Dr. Sears' Anti-Distemper Treatment. The first post tells about how my dog, Dwight got really sick, and then better. It's not a great story (except to me), and it may not help you decide whether or not the Distemper Treatment actually works. Skip to the bolded parts if you are in a hurry. The rest is a personal recollection of adopting Dwight.

The second post describes some theories on how the treatment might work--there is medical basis to the possibility that the treatment works. As a medical student, I would love to research this, but haven't figured out how to get that chance. And fortunately, from the facebook group, it seems that some veterinarians might finally start researching it soon.

The third post is an email from Dr. Sears describing how to do the treatment with just the Newcastle Vaccine, if you can't find a donor dog.

Dwight's Brush With Death

2009-01-26T06:01:00.000-08:00

Dwight's brush with death is not known in detail by very many of my friends and acquaintances, mostly because I haven't told my parents how much I spent trying to save a pound puppy from death.

So here's the story:
When we saw Dwight at the shelter, he was the sweetest, calmest puppy. When I let him out of his kennel, he didn't run around like other puppies would. He would immediately put his front paws up on my legs, slowly, one at a time, and then crawl into my lap, curl up, and hide his nose in my armpit. He was very skinny, with every rib and his hip bones showing. The first time we saw him, it was a Monday, and the Irving Animal Shelter was one of the only shelters in the Dallas area that was open, since most shelters stay open all weekend and take weekdays off since there is less likelihood that people will adopt a dog on a weekday. We had already seen a litter of Australian shepherd pups at the SPCA, which were cute, but just that--and we weren't sure we could handle the energy level of a shepherd.

We didn't take Dwight home that Monday, because his kennel card said he was a Staffy mix, and we'd heard so many bad things about pit bulls. As we left, he was sitting at the door of his kennel, staring after us with his big brown eyes. He definitely wasn't the cutest puppy we had seen, in fact, he wasn't even at the stage of puppyhood I was looking for as my first puppy experience, and had endless dandruff that would flake off his fur as I pet him. That night, Aaron and I kept ennumerating the reasons we could not take on a pit bull or a pit bull mix. We had both been scared off by the media image of pit bulls--unreliable, aggressive dogs. And even beyond that, we wanted a small-medium dog. And what about the difficulty of finding a place to rent with a big dog, much less a pit bull. But we had been talking about possible names for pups, one of the favorites being Dwight, after the guy from the Office, and before I went to bed that night, I told Aaron, wouldn't Dwight be the perfect name for him? And he agreed that it would.

The next day, after another day of fruitless searching, we stopped at the Irving shelter. I told Aaron (and myself) that I was only going to keep him company a bit while he waited for a home. I brought slices of turkey for him as a treat to cheer him up. But we ended up taking him home that day, he was just too sweet to leave. When we went up to the front desk to fill out the paperwork, the lady working noticed a note on his card that someone else had wanted them to hold him for her until Thursday. But when the lady called her, she just said to let us adopt him, and that it was a prayer that came true--she had planned on taking him if he was still at the shelter before his euth day, but couldn't really take on another dog.

On our way home, we took him to Banfield, the only vet office I was familiar with, who marked him as healthy, with a small case of kennel cough. They gave us an antibiotics prescription and sent us on our way. His cough got worse in the next couple of days, and so we took him to another vet, who gave us a different antibiotics prescription. Dwight seemed to get better almost immediately after starting that round of antibiotics. After a week, however, it got worse with a vengeance. His nose started dripping nonstop in addition to the coughing, to the extent that he had green mucus caked on his nose pretty much continuously for the next ten days. We took him back to the second vet, who then told us that it might be distemper, and gave us another antibiotics just in case it was a bad case of kennel cough. When we went back again, it had turned into pneumonia, and the vet said he was pretty sure it was distemper, but that there were no available tests for it, and that it was pointless to even try to test for it since there was no way to treat it.

During those days, I researched canine distemper constantly, and came across a couple of obscure websites describing a Dr. Alson Sears' distemper treatment. At first, I thought it was one of those internet scams, which would require you to pay a fee to get a booklet on a purported cure for an incurable disease. But then I noticed, all the information about the treatment was available online, and that's when I started believing the treatment might really work. In the end, my distemper story isn't all that helpful in deciding whether or not the treatment is a success--there are other stories that are more helpful. We were able to find the newcastle vaccine on an farm supply website, and ordered it, but it was taking too long to arrive, and the time for a good chance of recovery with the treatment had passed, due to the time it took to find the vaccine, and shipping time. One Sunday afternoon, I looked at Dwight, curled up in a red chair that had become his sickbed, with his tongue hanging out and his desperate fight for each breath, and thought he wouldn't last the night if we didn't do something. By this time, it seemed that our vet had given up on him--he had even suggested that we consider putting him to sleep, because his chances weren't good. It being Sunday, we took him to an emergency vet, who, after examining him, showed us a bill of $1000 of suggested treatment--IV fluids, oxygen, and all sorts of antibiotics, along with a lot of medical jargon meant to impress us into paying it all. We didn't want to leave him overnight, however, feeling that Dwight would just give up if we left him in an anonymous hospital environment. So we substituted IV fluids for subcutaneous fluids that gave him a water hump that was cool to the touch on his back, like a camel hump, about an hour of oxygen in the chamber, and two antibiotics injections. He started getting better steadily after that night.
The vaccine vial arrived soon after, and we took Dwight to another vet, who was the only one in the whole Dallas metroplex area who would consider injecting Dwight with the vaccine. Despite the fact that Dwight seemed to be getting better, we had the vet inject him anyways with the vaccine in hopes that it would stop the virus soon enough to prevent any neurological repercussions. To this day, he has shown no signs of any neurological problems.

So the question is--was Dwight really sick with distemper, or just a bad case of kennel cough that was worsened by a very antibiotics-resistant bacteria? The vet who diagnosed him with distemper now thinks that it wasn't. And it may not have been, since distemper (a virus) would not have been cured or made better by any sort of antibiotics, as antibiotics are only active against bacteria. So as you can see, my story doesn't help the case a whole lot.

What I do hope to contribute, however, is on the medical side of things. I have the advantage that my dad is an immunologist, and I emailed him to ask how this vaccine might work. I am a 2nd year medical student, and had hopes of researching this treatment to hopefully validate its effects. For right now, I have not been able to organize anything like that, but I do have some amateur theories of how it might work of my own, as well as some professional ones from my dad and one of his colleagues, which will be enumerated in the next post.

Theories on How the Treatment Works

2009-01-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

The problem with veterinary medicine is, though there are some people who are passionate about the veterinary field, it is generally considered secondary to human medicine, and thus, desire and funds to do research for veterinary medicine are few and far between. I believe it is quite unfair, since so many animals have suffered human drug trials, and other research that benefits humans, but research that would greatly benefit animals is considered frivolous.

In any case, the following is a couple of possibilities on how injecting a virus that only causes sickness in poultry into a dog might help the dog recover from the distemper virus.

1. A theory based on what I learned in my Immunology class:
When a person (or animal) is invaded by an organism (bacteria or virus), our immune systems develop antibodies against certain particles (called antigens) on the surface of these organisms to mark the particles for killing. Sometimes, these antibodies can react with other antigens that have a similar protein sequence as the initial antigen. This is why people can get rheumatic fever after a strep infection--the antibodies made by the body against the strep bacteria end up cross-reacting with heart muscle and other parts of the body, thus causing rheumatic fever. So maybe the Newcastle virus induces the production of antibodies that cross react with distemper. There is one problem with this theory: why wouldn't the body just create antibodies against distemper, then? So perhaps my theory is flawed.

2. My dad, thinks that the Newcastle virus perhaps induces the production of interferons, which help the body mount an immune response. He believes that it is possible that the distemper virus is a poor inducer of interferons, but is very sensitive to immune effects controlled by interferons.

3. His colleague believes that it could be the Newcastle virus replicating and taking over space that the distemper virus was using, thus inactivating distemper.

Here are some emails where they explain, in their own words, what the mechanism might be. I am deleting names, for privacy's sake, but it might be helpful to know that my dad is an immunologist who has worked on SARS virus, and avian flu in the past, and his colleague is well known for his work on the hepatitis viruses. They both specialize in infectious diseases.

my email to my dad:

From: Jennifer ******** [mailto:stark_rain24@hotmail.com]
Sent: Mon 3/5/2007 8:11 PM
To: *******************
Subject: Canine Distemper Treatment

Hi Dad,
I was doing some research on dog diseases, and came across an interesting "cure" for distemper, which is a viral disease that most vets say is incurable. The symptoms of this disease is first coughing, then pneumonia,
then diarrhea. Then, the virus reaches the brain and causes neurological
symptoms like seizures.
They came up with a vaccine in the 1950s, and so they stopped looking for a cure. But lots of stray dogs in shelters still get the virus because they are unvaccinated. It's got about a 50-80% death rate.

What was interesting is that this veterinarian in California thinks he has a cure--to find a healthy dog, and inject it with a vaccine for the Newcastle virus, which is a virus that infects birds. Then, 11-12 hours later, take blood from the healthy dog and give it to the dog that is sick with distemper. Supposedly, this cures the sickness (or at least makes the virus dormant).

My question is, do you think this works, and how? My only guess is that the Newcastle virus induces a general immune response from the healthy dog, which the sick dog uses to get better. If this is true, would it matter what virus is used to inject the healthy dog, as long as it is a virus that the healthy dog can't get sick from? Also, the vet emphasizes that it is very important that the blood is taken from the healthy dog exactly 11-12 hours after vaccination with Newcastle...why?

The vet says that he has had a lot of trouble letting people know about this cure, since there is a vaccine for distemper.

-Jennifer

my dad's email back:

Hi, Jennifer,

My direct gut feeling is that Newc Castle virus works, simply because it is a potent inducer of type I Interferons, one of the primary antiviral defense mechanism against viral infections. Type I IFNs can be produced by almost all types of nucleated cells unpon many virus infections. However, certain viruses are more potent than the others. For viruses, like New Castle, Sendai viruses, avial and human influenza viruses, etc.., are well known inducers of type I IFNs. However, this doesn't necessarily indicate that the infections with aforementioned viruses are easy to be control or cure, since some of these viruses, such as avian and severe human influenza viruses can evade Type I IFN-mediated antiviral activity, resultinbg in the establishment of infection and the subsequent pathogenesis. However, some strains of viruses are poor inducers of IFNs, for which SARS virus is one example. By saying that, SARS virus is not very sensitive to the IFN treatment. Ther underlying mechanism is intringuing but remains to be studied.

If whatever the Vet said is correct, I suspect that Canine distemper virus may be a poor inducer of IFNs but very sensitive to IFNs' antiviral activity. In addition to producing IFNs, infected host cells can produce other soluble and inflammatory factors, also known as interleukines and chemokines, that also control viral infection. However, if these soluble factors are produced in an illregulated manner, usually excessive amounts, they may cause diseases in the hosts, which is known as immune-mediated diseases. The bottom line is that IFNs are usually being produced earlier than those inflammatory mediators. TRhis may be the reason that the Vet said only those serum harvested at 12-16 hrs from New Castle virus-infected canine works to protect against Canine distemper virus. Make the long story short, I think IFN treatment may work to "cure" this canine disease. Unfortunately, unlike human or mouse in which recombinant IFNs are available, whether canine IFNs is available is a concern. By the way, IFNs are very expensive. Thus, using the "crude" IFNs esisting in the serum or plasma derived fron infected canine as the therapeuttic measures against canine diseases may be cost effective.

The whole theory that I speculate can be easily tested in the lab. If my hypothesis is correct, I anticipate the Sendai virus can work as good as New Castle virus against distemper virus.

I will look into the medline to check more about the vaccine and canine distemper virus and get back to you, if needed. There are quite a few research on Canine distemper virus out there. Let me know if teh vet is interested in doing some studies which I may be able to help in certain ways.

See you some time later this week.

Dad

He later CC'd our email correspondence to a few colleagues, one of whom responded:

From: ****************
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2007 7:32 AM
To: *****************
Subject: RE: Canine Distemper Treatment

The timing is not bad for an interferon response to the Newcastle
vaccine, which I imagine is a live vaccine. But I would be surprised if
the magnitude of that response were sufficient to impact the recipient.
I guess another possibility might be amplification of the vaccine virus
with infection and interference in the recipient - total speculation!

Newcastle Vaccine Treatment Without Serum Donor Dog

2009-01-26T05:30:00.000-08:00

Email from Dr. Sears describing how to do the treatment with just the Newcastle vaccine (since it is very difficult to find a donor dog to make the serum). Information on how to make the serum is here.

From: AntiDistemper@aol.com
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 06:52:23 EST
Subject: Re: Please Help--Distemper cure?
To: **********

Thanks for the inquiry. Yes you can use the NCD virus directly but it must be done immediately. You have no time to waste in treating distemper. Must be done before the virus has a chance to permanently damage the dog.

Take the NCD bottle to your vet. 6 cc of diluent into the freeze dried NCD virus bottle of 1000 unit material. This is now your inducer. This material is injected as 1/2 to 1 cc IV. It usually takes about 12 hrs for the distemper to undergo a complete cure.
Again timing is everything. If your dog has been sick for more than 4 days then less effect. After 6 days of illness you get almost no effect. So, treat fast and early. Good luck. If your Vet has any questions have him write to me or call. Always happy to talk and explain how and why this works.

AWSears,DVM

2009-01-26T04:42:00.000-08:00

This is Dwight before he got too sick, on February 18, 5 days after we adopted him.

Taken on March 3, 2007. This is at the height of his sickness. I don't have a lot of pictures of him around this time, because I was superstitious about documenting him as if he might be gone soon. Just this picture and the one before this, and one video of before he got too sick.

March 14, 2007 Dwight about a month after we adopted him. He has been better about 1.5-2 weeks by now, and has gained some weight.

Dwight grown up. He's a cuddler!