Equine Herpes Virus-1: Virus, Immunity and Vaccines

ABSTRACT

Equine Herpes virus-1 (EHV-1) is one of the most common respiratory pathogens of the horse. EHV-1 induces several clinical signs of disease ranging in severity, from mild respiratory distress to abortion in pregnant mares, neonatal foal death and neuropathogenic disorders. This review details some aspects of EHV-1 biology, its life cycle and pathogenicity in the natural host. Protective immunity stimulated by natural EHV-1 infection, which is short lived and depends of both humoral and cellular immune responses, will also be treated here. Vaccination remains today one of the best options to fight EHV-1 infection and several different strategies of vaccination that have been investigated and developed over the past decades will be presented in this report.