Immune response of African elephants to a single dose of SpayVac®, a pZP contraceptive vaccine, over a seven year period
Bibliographic record
Abstract
As free-ranging African elephant (Loxodonta africana) populations become increasingly confined to smaller ranges, concerns grow about human–elephant conflicts and negative impacts on flora and fauna. Current elephant population management alternatives include translocation, culling, dispersal techniques, surgical sterilization, and contraceptive vaccines. Porcine zona pellucida (pZP) immunocontraception may have the greatest potential to control fertility because it has proven efficacy, and vaccines are easy to handle and safe to administer. SpayVac® (ImmunoVaccine) is a pZP vaccine that has demonstrated single-dose, multi-year contraceptive efficacy in other wildlife species, which would make it practical and economical for field application if it performs similarly in African elephants. Over a 7-year period, we assessed the immune response of African elephants to two SpayVac formulations: non-aqueous (n=3) and aqueous (n=3) emulsions. pZP antibody titers raised by the non-aqueous SpayVac formulation were first detected 4 weeks post-vaccination but did not peak until after 1 year, after which they remained consistently elevated through 7 years. This study demonstrated the ability of a single-dose of non-aqueous SpayVac to elicit an antibody response in African elephants for 7 years. Additional research is needed to determine actual contraceptive efficacy and potential long-term effects on fertility. Alors que les populations d’éléphants d’Afrique en liberté (Loxodonta africana) sont de plus en plus confinées à des habitats plus petits, les inquiétudes grandissent au sujet des conflits hommes-éléphants et des impacts négatifs sur la flore et la faune. Des alternatives actuelles de gestion des populations d’éléphants comprennent la translocation, l’abattage, les techniques de dispersion, la stérilisation chirurgicale et les vaccins contraceptifs. L’immunocontraception à la Pellucina Zona Porcina (pZP) peut avoir le plus grand potentiel de contrôler la fertilité, car elle a prouvé son efficacité, et les vaccins sont faciles à manipuler et sûrs à administrer. Le SpayVac® (ImmunoVaccine, Inc., Halifax, Nouvelle-Écosse, B3H 0A8, Canada) est un vaccin pZP qui a démontré l’efficacité d’une dose unique contraceptive sur plusieurs années chez d’autres espèces sauvages, ce qui le rendrait plus pratique et économique pour l’application sur le terrain s’il se révèle performant de la même façon chez les éléphants d’Afrique. Au cours d’une période de 7 ans, nous avons évalué la réponse immunitaire des éléphants d’Afrique à deux formulations SpayVac: des émulsions non aqueuses (n = 3) et aqueuses (n = 3). Des titres d’anticorps pZP soulevés par la formulation de SpayVac non aqueuse ont d’abord été détectés 4 semaines après la vaccination, mais ne culminaient qu’à 1 année, après quoi ils sont restés constamment élevés pendant 7 ans. Cette étude a démontré l’aptitude d’une dose unique de SpayVac non aqueuse de provoquer une réponse d’anticorps chez les éléphants d’Afrique pendant 7 ans. Des recherches supplémentaires sont nécessaires pour déterminer l’efficacité réelle de la contraception et les effets potentiels à long terme sur la fertilité.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".