Haemophilia testing - Page 1

I wrote in the League magasine, late 1980 about Dr Rummel giving his speech at the customary Welcome speech during that years Seiger show. He announced that Canto v d Weinerau had produced 5 cases of haemophilia and he (Dr Rummel) warned about inbreeding to the dog, as I believe by then, he was dead. I found the whole scenario intriging as to my knowledge, heamophilia can only be carried by females.  The SV vet who was sitting next to me said that over 200 cases had been identified.
Do we still have cases of this disease? I had my young male tested - just because it is the thing to do!  I read recently that there was research into trying to test bitches to see if they are carriers. Does that mean that the GSD still suffers from this problem? Does anyone know of any cases in any country? Margaret

I too would be interested to know if there have been any recent cases identified.

Margaret N-J

 me 3 would like to know 

me 4 would like to know

I heard that there are 4 kinds of hemophilia.  The females can carry the trait and not show it as it is a sex-linked gene.  Males when they have it show it.  There were sons and or females who were shown as not having it or not carrying it. 

Doesn't seem as though anyone knows of any sufferers or carriers - so why are we still testing after 30 years?! How many generations is that?! Somebody is making money from us. Margaret

My thoughts exactly Margaret., either there are haemophiliacs that are being kept quiet or the test is redundant because we can tell by the dogs pedigree if it is likely to be one or not.

Margaret N-J

Would the breed council know the answer to this ? I know the results are sent to them as i have just had my boy tested, so it could be worth getting in touch with them and asking the question. When was the last time a dog came back positive for it ????

It should be remembered that Canto was most likely a mutation or maybe he was born typehO. This is according to Dr Willis in his book A Genetic history of the breed. So it would be foolish to stop testing. At least this could detect any possible new mutations.
A direct female line traceable to Canto is likely to see the females as obligate carriers, which means that they would be the carrier BUT most likely that they could pass on the problem to male offspring. Same as humans and for more comparisms check out Queen Victoria and her son. Cant recall his name I'm afraid.
The test is cheap and simple why reinvent the wheel if it works?
Check out the GSDL website soon for a simple guide to health issues in the GSD.
Thanks
Steve Foran
  

I see where you are coming from Steve, but without disparaging health testing, I sometimes feel we are blindly going along with tests more out of hope than results.  Just because a test is cheap is no reason to carry on doing it if there is no point,  The hip scoring scheme has been going for 50 years, yet no improvement to show it is really doing any good beyond making vets richer and letting breeders kid themselves they are in far more control of nature than they really are, who but dog breeders would carry on after 50 years of failure?  We will probably carry on for the next 50 years unless more is found out about why dogs develop it and as long as we have the false security of the hip scoring scheme, who is looking for another answer?

Margaret N-J.