Advances in vaccine strategies against equine herpesvirus-1

Equine herpesvirus-1 (EHV-1) is the ubiquitous viral pathogen causing respiratory infections, abortion in pregnant mares, neurological disorders, and neonatal foal deaths in horses worldwide. Once infected, horse remains a carrier for whole life due to typical nature of latency associated with EHV1 infection. Vaccination is the only option for effective control of the disease. Over the past few decades several vaccines including inactivated, subunit, live, and DNA vaccines have been developed to combat the disease. Despite limitation of all the vaccines, vaccination remains the prime option to fight against EHV-1 infection in horses. Till date, no vaccine showed potentiality to protect the neurological form of infections in horses. There is desperate necessity to search for improved new generation EHV-1 vaccines such as mRNA based vaccine that may stimulate not only humoral immunity but also systemic cellular immunity in the horses. This review highlights the state-of-the-art knowledge regarding vaccines studied in the past to prevent EHV-1 infection along with new directions need to be adopted to prevent EHV-1 infection and outbreak in horses in future.