Update on ARVC and JKD

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.