FB 30. It may seem to many of you that everything has been rather quiet on the health and JKD fronts, but is surely hasn’t been quiet for me. First, with great relief I was able to pay off the publication costs for the ARVC paper using the funds raised so fantastically by Peter Squires and provided by so many of you. I am so sincerely grateful to you all. Following on from this I have received the extended summary of the ARVC paper which is to come out in hard copy for all the vets who subscribe to the publishing journal, Veterinary Record. And more than that, they have asked for any photographs that could be used for the cover. Here Amanda Jinks/Jeffries stepped in with her very explicit ‘before and after onset’ colour photos of her unfortunate cardiomyopathy case, Claude, that she was able to find despite the passage of 7 years. Then, Sheila Cartwright and I have pulled together a group of qualified people to present a package of evidence on JKD with information sources, together with the pedigrees of UK cases I have collected, surely also with those from some other countries included. And finally I am trying to get our internal medicine specialist, Rory Bell, interested in a project to seek for the hidden JKD cases to account for the clear shortage. Not only would this greatly help the understanding of the inheritance of JKD but could contribute a great deal to the searches to find the gene.
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I wrote this for Breed Notes in the two dog papers, but it semed a appropriate to place it here too. "I feel I have to comment on aspects of the Breed Council chairman’s report to the press. Firstly, I did not specifically ask for financial help for publication of the ARVC/BCM paper. Rather I made what I regarded as a conciliatory gesture considering the political situation, of asking Breed Council if it would like to contribute to funding the Open Access publication costs being faced by other authors (my own contribution paid by my old research lab). I thought after the bad press Breed Council has been getting on facebook they would have jumped at the chance to gain some good cred, but not so. Even token support would have served, as the paper received much acclaim at the Cardiovascular Group meeting of the recent major Veterinary Congress in Birmingham. With Open Access, everyone (vets, cardiologists and even Boxer breeders) can access the paper. Fortunately, a fund was set up by Peter Squires on the internet and raised the full sum in a little over two weeks with donations from all over the world, but also from the UK Boxer show world (mostly anonymously). It may be thought that since the breeding control scheme has seemingly wiped out ARVC from our show stock, the paper with its new findings were unimportant in the UK. This is totally wrong. The disease remains a problem in the non-show population which must represent at least 80% of the breed. The breeding control scheme has proved of limited value to them (they are too far removed from source animals). Do we just let them continue to suffer?
FB 26. Noting Sheila Cartwright’s update on the fate of the JKD petition on pedigree release, I have felt compelled to look over the pedigrees I hold to see how many are publishable. It has been quite intriguing looking at them again after some 5 years but the first 40 are pretty depressing, as a number have missing veterinary and other evidence. I am trying to resolve these even now. However, despite the gaps, the pedigree picture remains impressive and this alone should convince anyone that JKD is inherited. I am now up to around the 60 case mark and the quality of the data is much better, but there are still so many more to go. What has struck me however is that the distribution of cases is shifting. At the start it was exclusively the top championship show section that suffered JKD, but of late this has diminished. Most of the main producers have indeed gone. However, it is now the section of the breed which is simply producing nice Boxers, that is suffering, and also the pet breeding section. A potential trouble for me is that these sections have no central body to represent them even though numerically they are the majority groups in the breed
As I suspect some of you think I am being stubbornly difficult as far as the health committee is concerned I thought I should circulate a letter I sent to Breed Council 10 days ago. I have not had a reply yet.
Dear Janice and Malcolm, As you will be aware the Boxer world is now in turmoil about JKD. I believe Breed Council have the JKD Petition from Boxer owners and breeders on the agenda for the next Council meeting, this requesting that Council authorise release of all JKD pedigrees. There will be no one there to speak to the Petition or indeed explain the whole JKD problem, which is indeed difficult. Although I face constant opposition from the Breed Council’s Health Committee, I write to say I would be willing to attend the meeting, explain the genetic position as I see it, and answer any questions on the disease as best I can. I cannot believe that British Boxer breeders’ long-held positive attitude on dealing with genetic defects can have changed so totally in the last few years that they now no longer wish to take any action on a health problem, here JKD. FB 16. I have just seen the August 2014 issue of the American Boxer Club Charitable Foundation. In it Kerstin-Lindblad-Toh of the Broad Institute reports on her study upon JKD/JRD in American Boxers indicating that she has identified a good candidate gene. I think we heard a little about this last summer following reports from the big veterinary meeting in Europe. In any event, I gather the plan is now to increase the number of dogs by including Swedish Boxers, and I have certainly seen posts asking Swedish and other European breeders for help. I had independently offered Kerstin Lindblad-Toh our UK samples but, for personal reasons she did not reply for a while, and by then I had agreed to contribute to a parallel Norwegian programme that has also found a candidate gene. We live in hopes, but we had a candidate gene in our first UK studies on JKD too and this did not work out. Finding some genes is not easy. Look at ARVC - this did not work out either, when applied in practice. I may hear something about the Norwegian JKD work later this month. Frankly, with JKD, it is the controls that worry me, but the researchers seem to think they can cope statistically with anything. At another level I am worried about the lack of any practical help for breeders, particularly here in the UK where JKD is on everyone’s mind. I have tried pushing a member of the health committee for action, but clearly nothing is going to happen. In disgust I have probed for information myself and, as indicated a month or so ago, I did find some signs that we may yet be able to do something useful - with a little dedication. Firstly, if indeed breeders are indeed following the initial guideline, to avoid inbreeding as far as possible, which appears to be the case, this alone should reduce the incidence of the disease. Secondly, if JKD-producers are voluntarily being withdrawn from breeding, as inspection of KC registrations suggests, this should not only reduce the incidence of JKD but equally importantly, it should reduce the incidence of the gene responsible. Without anything else, the incidence of JKD should decline, and we can actually help this shift. It would best if breeders
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BoxerJKDCommunication posted through Facebook Archives
May 2018
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