To those owners who have sent Buccal Swabs to the Helsinki Epilepsy Research Project:
Another step forward has been taken in the study of canine epilepsy.
In June 2015 Hannes Lohi’s team at Helsinki University published a research paper in which the team concluded that their genetic data implicated ADAM23 as a common risk gene for idiopathic epilepsy in four unrelated dog breeds and that further replication studies in additional breeds would be ongoing.
http://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-015-1651-9
The results of the next phase of their research have recently been published in which they studied the association of the ADAM23 gene with idiopathic or primarily genetic epilepsy in eight dog breeds. This research supports their first conclusion and the results support the role of ADAM23 in several dog breeds as a common risk gene for epilepsy with low penetrance but they believe other, as yet unknown, factors may contribute to the disease risk.
The haplotype frequencies in Pyrenean Shepherds, Miniature Pinschers and Irish Setters showed a similar trend as in the other studied breeds, although the associations were not statistically significant
During the last four years around 40 DNA samples from UK Irish Setters which have been diagnosed with epilepsy have been sent to Professor Hannes Lohi’s Canine Genetics research group at the University of Helsinki. Samples from some 80 close family members of these dogs and some 40 older dogs which have not had seizures have also been sent
We would like to thank those owners who have submitted DNA samples as Irish Setters were one of the 8 breeds studied with 22 cases and 46 controls and we know that DNA samples from UK were used.
For the full abstract go to:
http://bmcgenet.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12863-017-0478-6
If you would like to send DNA samples see our original page.
