syringomyelia question

[rebhhh]

whaaaaaaaaa Thanks guys ....... !! Ok so it can go undetected for quite sometime then jesus ! .... jeanie was 18 months but i cannot defo stay it was that ! ..... but i am i right to think it can be triggered by trauma aswell ?like a head injury (swelling ) ? ..... he did ask for Jeanies breeding at the time and he noted it down so sounds like he gathering info on lines ect ...... but he did stay on the phone to me and like what i read that there are ppl still breeding there dogs when they have had confirmation that there dogs have this ! eeeks x

[Lucy]

I've never heard of it being caused by injury so I googled it and got this information:

"How common is trauma a cause of canine syringomyelia?
In humans post-traumatic syringomyelia occurs up to 30% of patients following traumatic paraplegia and tetraplegia. This typically occurs within 5 years of the accident (range 2 months to 32 years). In humans post traumatic syringomyelia represents approximately 11% of the cases of syringomyelia, compared to 50% due to Chiari malformation. Post traumatic syringomyelia is rare in the dog presumably because most animals with devastating spinal injures tend to be euthanatized. Granger and Jeffery (2009) investigated nine chronically paraplegic dogs; MRI detected small (~ 3.5cm long) syrinxes in two dogs. Neither dog had clinical signs relating to the syrinx."

Not sure how old the article is, I think perhaps a few years.

[Lucy]

I'm assuming that the head injury would have to be pretty serious to cause it though.

[rebhhh]

hi found this link it looks ok but not sure how up to date it is! its based on cavs x

www.rhiannoncavaliers.com/articles/83-syringomyelia-sm-in-dogs-implication-for-the-cavalier-king-charles-spaniel

In the congenital form symptoms are usually first seen from 6 to 18 months of age but depending upon the degree affected could manifest at any age. In the acquired form symptoms can be seen any time after the original injury or trauma to the spine.

i clipped the above in from the website, but i recon you are right the trauma must be quite serious

[tallulahcouture]

WOW! it's a very big issue isn't it... I am reassured that Graham Foote seems to be tackling the problem rather than burying his head in the sand ( which is what seems to have happened in some other dog breed groups)
It's good to see the boss of the BCC checking his dogs and admitting to the problems.

I guess the chihuahua show people will get to know the breeders that are breeding the dogs with SM and learn to avoid them.
Maybe these people will eventually be 'blacklisted' in the world of breeding and that will leave only the healthy dogs in the gene pool?

[Sarah]

the problem is everyone is in a panic and there is nothing telling us how to move forward at the moment.. No one is being proactive everyone appears to just be chucking names about. We can all make our own assumptions but the fact is until there is a DNA marker its a trial and error basis on what lines produce it... For example

2 of Grahams dogs diagnosed were litter mates... their 1/2 sister (same father) daughter was found free of SM... however one would assume that this bitches mother (as the mother was the 1/2 sister) could be a carrier of the gene or could not be.. genetics are very confusing but we need to ensure that dogs are tested and when a DNA test is found we all dna test also.. carriers are only to be bred to dogs free from the gene and those with SM are not to be bred at all..

The sad thing is people keep quiet.. Graham has blown the whistle so to speak i would hope that people who have had their dogs tested and have been found to have SM also step forward. It is very confusing and very upsetting and i think everyone is in a kind of panic at the moment.

The other problem is that even those dogs have been scanned we can only take the breeders word for it that they are either clear or have been tested.. the KC keep record of it but as SM screening is not a recommended health test within Chihuahuas we cannot use the KC's health tester tool.. I put in Grahams dogs that i knew had been tested and found to have SM and it said there were no records because there are no tests available for this breed.. kinda defeats the objective in my eyes

[Rosie]

I would hope that the KC start to publish these results now that the issue is out in the open.

[Lowenchi]

Apr 27, 2012 13:57:45 GMT Lucy said:

I think it does need to be bred out and until there is a DNA test, I think dogs that have it or have produced offspring with it should be spayed/neutered. This needs to be bred OUT before the situation gets as bad as it is in CKCS.

If it is only in a small % of Chihuahuas then you could just eliminate them from the gene pool by not using them for breeding. if it is widespread, then you can't eliminate them or you will have no gene pool left and you could get other conditions appearing. In Cavaliers they can't eliminate dogs with syrinxes completely or they would have no gene pool left, so they have breeding guidelines to enable them to ensure any dog with a syrinx is only mated to clear dogs. so right now all we can do is carry on as normal and get the most used stud dogs scanned and then work from there. they are trying to do it with out panic. a lot of the Cavalier breeders stopped breeding but it only made things worse.