Samoyed enrollment for this study is closed. SCARF wishes to thank the efforts of many Samoyed owners for contributing to this research study. We are now anxiously awaiting the results of this research to share with you.
**Autoimmune Disease: Histocompatibility Alleles Conferring
Susceptibility to Canine Diabetes, Immune-Mediated Thyroiditis and
Immune-Mediated Hemolytic Anemia
**
**Sponsor(s):
**Alaskan Malamute Club of America, Inc., American Belgian Tervuren
Club, Inc., American German Shepherd Dog Charitable Foundation, American
Spaniel Club Health Foundation, Australian Terrier Club of America,
Borzoi Club of America, French Bulldog Club of America Rescue League,
Golden Retriever Foundation, Health & Rescue Foundation of the Petit
Basset Griffon Vendeen Club of America, Irish Wolfhound Club of America,
Inc., Keeshond Club of America, Kerry Blue Terrier Foundation, Pekingese
Charitable Foundation, Plum Creek Kennel Club of Colorado, Rottweiler
Health Foundation, Samoyed Club of America Education & Research
Foundation, Westie Foundation of America, Inc.
**Researcher:
**Wayne Potts, PhD, University of Utah
Abstract from the AKCCHF website:
"Autoimmune diseases cause significant amounts of mortality and
debilitating disease in dogs. In humans many autoimmune diseases occur
only in individuals expressing one of the few predisposing
histocompatibility genes. For example, all cases of type I diabetes in
humans are associated with only a few of the many alleleic forms of
class II histocompatibility genes. Consequently, if the frequencies of
these few alleles were reduced by half, the incidence of diabetes would
be reduced by half.
Here we propose to characterize histocompatibility susceptibility alleles for three major, heritable canine autoimmune diseases - diabetes, immune-mediated thyroiditis and immune-mediated hemolytic anemia. If any of these three debilitating (or lethal) autoimmune diseases have a restricted number of susceptibility alleles it will allow: (1) development of diagnostic tests for identifying individuals at risk for prophylactic therapy and research and (2) reduction of he incidence of the disease by selective breeding of individuals carrying the predisposing histocompatibility alleles. For each of the three autoimmune diseases, we propose to collect DNA samples from approximately 100 purebred dogs diagnosed with the disease. Histocompatibility genes will be cloned and sequenced for each dog for a total of approximately 1100 sequences. Histocompatiility alleles will be tested for significant associations with each of the autoimmune diseases."