Health Committee members meet with RVC IVDE research team

Post date: Mar 15, 2014 11:53:29 PM

Five members of our Health Committee met on 14th March with the Royal Veterinary College's research team who published a paper last year on the relationship between Dachshund Length:Height ratio and back disease (IVDE). Left to right in the picture below are Ian Seath, Roger Sainsbury, Gina Salisbury, Helga Klausgraber and Judy Squires. They met with Rowena Packer, Charlotte Burn, Holger Volk and Anke Hendricks to discuss the research findings and to identify further work that will help with reducing the prevalence of back disease. Rowena's presentation was more detailed than the one she made at our recent Neurology Seminar (slides here). While IVDE is known to have a high heritability, there are also environmental and lifestyle factors which affect the risk of a disk extrusion.

It was agreed that a number of projects would be initiated and run jointly by the Breed Council's Health Committee and the RVC team. These will cover:

    • Correlating Rowena's Length:Height Ratio with the measurement ratio defined in the UK Breed Standard, with the aim of improving advice to judges, breeders and owners

    • Investigating variations in the number of Lumbar Vertebrae in Dachshunds' backs (7 is the normal number, but Dachshunds can have 6, 7 or 8)

    • An evaluation of the lifestyle factors that affect IVDE (primarily body condition and exercise) with the aim of improving advice for owners

    • A review of our earlier Thermal Imaging study to see if it might lead to a "back health" monitoring approach

More information on the projects will be published once work gets underway.

We would like to express our thanks to the RVC team for their support and enthusiasm for working with us on this significant Dachshund health condition.