DCM and OSA studies

We have been in communication with Jeff Phillips at the University of Tennessee over the last 2 years and have sent blood from all our young hounds to be included in the OSA and DCM study, below is the recent note he has asked to be circulated through the US Deerhound-L SO if anyone wants to help please let us know as we do have the blood bottles available.

All our puppies are included in the project, their blood is sent at 10 weeks so we will stay in touch with all owners and send a yearly health report to Jeff . It involves sending a 10ml blood sample to them through the post If anyone wants to contact him for more information, his email is jphill35@utk.edu

It is looking likely we will eventually be gettiing the information which will help us all avoid breeding dogs with these problems and we think, the factor viid programme of breeding, avoiding producing affected animals without loosing our gene pool, has in a way prepared us for a similar effort on DCM AND OSA. It is certainly something we want to be involved with as and when we get the information.

"I wrote some time ago describing my efforts to identify the genetic basis for DCM in Deerhounds. I have been working on this project with a non-profit research group headquartered in Scottsdale, AZ and we have completed the first phase. Using information collected on a group of 50 dogs we believe we have identified regions associated with DCM in Deerhounds. To confirm these findings, we plan to screen over 1,000 deerhounds (both affected with DCM and normal). The goal is to determine the sensitivity and specificity of this test and confirm the results. Based on our initial group of 50 dogs, it certainly looks promising but as you can understand the confirmation process is critical. Further, if any are interested in participating and currently have any dogs diagnosed with DCM or adult dogs with NORMAL Echocardiograms that they would like me to add to this testing please contact me directly. We will be running the samples sometime this summer as a group. Thus before then I would need to have blood samples from any dogs you are interested in testing.

Also, as many know I am pursuing a similar project with OSA. The first phase (identifying the genetic region and designing a test for OSA) was completed last year and published in the journal Genomics.  The “confirmation step” of these results is currently being performed in collaboration with an investigator at the NCI who has studied OSA for years in humans.  The goal will be to test as many deerhounds as possible for the OSA genetic defect so that we can determine the sensitivity and specificity of the test I originally described last year. Adequate samples have been collected for this project but if any are interested please contact me directly.  Overall, while this project has been going much slower than I had hoped I do suspect we will be finished this year."