New Info about Bloat - Page 1

Finally some scientific info about bloat that makes sense and may lead to some useful ways to prevent it:

https://www.purinaproclub.com/resource-library/pro-club-updates/genetic-gut-bacteria-link-to-bloat-in-great-danes-leads-to-risk-association-test/

The study used Great Danes but a lot applies to GSDs.

This article also mentions the link between bloat and inflammatory bowel disease which has been known for a long time but for some reason has been largely ignored:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8784718

Moral of this and other stuff:

1.  Avoid getting a dog from lines with bloat or other GI problems. Hard to do since a lot of this stuff is covered up.

2.  Keep your dog's gut biome healthy. This includes NOT stopping your dog from eating fresh dog crap from healthy dogs. Eating this stuff can make a dog's gut biome healthy. They actually give "donor feces" from healthy people to people with severe gastrointestinal diseases and it has saved lives. Just one example:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa1205037

Hope you didn't just eat lunch.

3. Try to keep any inflammatory bowel disease under control as much as possible.

4. Do not deworm the crap out of your dogs. A reasonable number of intestinal worms (not an overload) gives the immune system something to do besides beat up on the intestines. Docs have deliberately infected people who have inflammatory bowel disease with intestinal worms with very good results in many cases. The whole hygiene hypothesis thing. Again, hope you didn't just eat lunch.

Aware faecal donation has taken place in human medicine, esp. for treating c.diff.; but has it actually been tried with canines ?
There are processing differences between direct translation of faecal matter into the intestines, and a dog who just eats other dogs' crap.

 

The difficulty with the Danes study was that it overturned a lot of what had come to be believed about prevention actions, and confused the heck out of people.

Canine fecal:

http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2015/12/13/fecal-transplants.aspx

http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2015/12/20/fecal-transplant-saves-puppy.aspx

 

Dr. Harkey is now doing a study about bloat in German Shepherds.  I sent him DNA from my two girls.  One of which has relatives that I know died from bloat (father and an older full brother).

"There are processing differences between direct translation of faecal matter into the intestines, and a dog who just eats other dogs' crap."

In people and dogs they give the feces through a nasogastric tube, which means a tube through the nose and into the stomach. So it's not put directly into the intestines and it's basically the same as eating poop. Which obviously people won't do so they tube it directly into the stomach. The whole GI tract, from the stomach to the rectum, needs to get the goodies, so they have to start with the stomach.

I have fed healthy poop mixed with canned dog food to two dogs with inflammatory bowel disease (both of them were not poop eaters). They both got a lot better.

Thanks for the links--very useful stuff.

I know most folks will blow this off--hey, everyone knows that bloat is caused by running around and guzzling after eating and never mind that most bloat cases happen in the middle of the night with an empty stomach--but if you have an open mind and want to help your dog check out the whole gut biome thing and fecal transplants. It is amazing how much damage a screwed up gut biome can cause in dogs and people. Some good info here:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/290747.php

May be something to this! One of my dogs is a long-time poop eater, and her gut can handle just about ANYTHING! She used to eat my socks and big chunks of rubber off her toys - everything came through with no problem! The only time I remember her getting a serious case of the runs was when both she and Ranger got giardia after falling through the ice into a beaver pond in the early spring!

Very interesting article here that blows most of the commonly held ideas about bloat right out of the water. As you said, most dogs bloat on an empty stomach. Timing of eating and drinking has nothing to do with it. And the number of dogs that bloat is MUCH less in countries that don't feed mainly kibble!

 

http://www.vin.com/apputil/content/defaultadv1.aspx?meta=Generic&pId=11165&id=3848657

Personally, I think there are two different situations involving bloat. You have the dogs which bloat while young to middle aged, and which often will continue to do so even after they've had the gastropexy done. Then you have the ones that have no problem with their gut in any fashion, until they hit their senior years.

I can see genetics definitely playing a role in young to middle aged dogs, whereas I suspect that age-related decline causes malfunctioning of the esophageal and/or pyloric sphincters.

I also submitted DNA to Dr. Harkey's study, from my old pet-bred male who bloated at 8 years of age, as well as from my WG showline female, who probably has some affected relatives [given the linebreeding in the WG showlines] but who has so far never given me a moment's concern in that area. If there are genetic markers that can be identified in relation to bloat, we can only benefit from their discovery.

Thanks ! (I think  ) - I have seen TV programmes here where the faecal matter was introduced 'up the other way' ...ie introduced into humans by anal suppository.

I heard an interesting discussion here recently about probiotics, and the difficulty in getting sufficient supplies of "good bacteria" past the stomach acid and actually into the bowel - could that not be a difficulty with these treatments, also ?

"I have seen TV programmes here where the faecal matter was introduced 'up the other way' ...ie introduced into humans by anal suppository."

They were the "lucky ones" I guess. That route seems to work if it's mainly the colon that's affected.

"I heard an interesting discussion here recently about probiotics, and the difficulty in getting sufficient supplies of "good bacteria" past the stomach acid and actually into the bowel - could that not be a difficulty with these treatments, also?"

You would sure think so. But fecal transplants are so successful that the "good stuff" (which includes thousands of species of microbes--bacteria, viruses, and fungi) must have evolved to blow off the stomach acid. Which may not be true of laboratory grown bacteria that you get in a tidy little capsule that doesn't stink. Plus the lab stuff covers only a few species. Alas no substitute for the real deal.

This stuff is so mainstream now in human medicine that if you are really healthy you can actually make money as a fecal donor. Details here if you can stand it:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/08/31/heres-what-it-takes-to-be-the-perfect-poop-donor/?utm_term=.91ae56946b5e

Now I know all this sounds too disgusting to deal with but this sh*t is lifesaving when nothing else works.

Most of the biggest training mistakes I made when I was young and stupid happened because I did not believe what dogs were telling me. Dogs that eat poop know what they are doing. I cringe when I remember how I used to work with clients to discourage their dogs from eating poop. I hope none of those dogs got sick. Who knew back then?

Now I just work on getting the dogs to stop with the kissy face after a poop banquet.

And thanks folks for the comments. I know science isn't real popular on PDB but you folks are some of the exceptions. Also I am hoping some of the lurkers might use this info to help their dogs.

"This shit is life saving when nothing else works".

LOVE it !

Update on Dr. Harkey's study.

Received this email from him yesterday (I will be sending him samples from my dogs):

Dear Bloat Study participants,

This is a brief update on the German Shepherd Bloat study that you have participated in, as well as a request for an additional sample. Let me first thank you for participating in this study, and taking the time send the cheek swab sample. We hope this work will ultimately lead to the prevention of bloat in all dogs.

Over the last few months we have been logging in the data from your health questionnaires, extracting DNA from the cheek swabs of your canine family member, and generating sequence data from the 3 genes we think are important in predisposing some dogs to Gastric Dilatation Volvulus (GDV). One variant of each gene proved to be associated with GDV in a previous study of Great Danes. We call these variants “Risk Alleles”, because their presence is associated with higher risk to the disease. This finding is now published in the American Journal of Veterinary Research (Vol. 78, pages 934-945, 2017).

While the majority of the genetic analysis still lies ahead, I can say that we already see a similar association emerging in one of the genes in German Shepherds. As in the Great Danes, the DRB1: 01201 allele is strongly associated with GDV in German Shepherds. DRB1 is part of the immune system , and influences which bacteria in the gut are allowed to flourish, and which ones are attacked as invaders. We believe that the DRB1:01201 gene variant causes a change in this microbial population (the gut microbiome) and that this unhealthy microbiome puts the dog at increased risk of GDV.

This hypothesis was confirmed in our Great Dane study. We found that the dogs in the GDV group had a significantly altered gut microbiome that also correlated with the presence of the 3 risk alleles mentioned above. This study has been submitted to the journal, PLOS ONE, for publication.

We now have the funding to expand the German Shepherd study to include microbiome analysis. If we can identify changes in the microbiome of German Shepherds associated with GDV, as we did in Great Danes, then probiotics may be designed to return the microbiome to its healthy state. This could potentially prevent GDV in genetically at-risk dogs.

So we are asking if you would be willing to collect a second sample (a stool sample) from your dog. If so, we will send you a collection kit with all the necessary materials and instructions to collect and return the sample to our lab. If you wish to participate please send me an email or call, using the contact information below.

Thank you,

Mike



Michael Alan Harkey, PhD