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Collies as experimental animals?

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  • Kris Klemme
    • Puppy

    Collies as experimental animals?

    Kris Klemme

    Posted : 10/17/2007 1:18:06 PM

    Dear readers,

    some of you might already know our German project www.mdr1-defekt.de. On this homepage we show tested dogs and provide informations about this serious mutation within the MDR1 gene.

    Further we are looking for news about this defect in the mdr1 and today we were shocked about finding this information:

    http://www.avma.org/onlnews/javma/sep07/070915a.asp

    So as this text is quite difficult to understand (and I prefer to thinking it's not true what I understand ...) we have a question:

    Is it already usual to breed mutant/mutant collies to test avermectines and is our breed already used as experimental animals ? Or does this information say that these informations are plans for the future to find the right dosage?

    Can someone please explain this information for me in "easy words" ?

    Best regards from Germany,
    Kris

    As for our project - we already show more than 600 dogs from all over the world! And every owner worldwide is invited to send us pictures and results.
  • Cita
    • Gold Top Dog
    Cita

    Posted : 10/17/2007 10:35:19 PM

     That's a really interesting website/experiment. From the website you shared, my understanding is the same as yours. However, I don't know whether or not what they say is actually true. I would need several sources to confirm the information before I believed that mutant collies were intentionally bred to test these drugs, as the website claims.

    I'm sorry I can't help you with more information, but thank you for sharing your work.
  • polarexpress
    • Gold Top Dog
    polarexpress

    Posted : 10/18/2007 11:37:24 AM

    I read the article you linked, plus a few more. From what I can see, groups of collies have been used to test the safety of new kinds of ivermectin-type treatments before those treatments are made available for general use.The goal seems to be to create drugs that are safe to use on collies and other ivermectin-sensitive breeds.

    Reading through it seems like it is routine to test any new drug on a number of breeds to make sure all breeds can tolerate the drug. 

    Your link was the only one that specifically said dogs were bred for the trait. BTW I don't think this makes them "mutant" collies. I think it is a simple matter of screening for the sensitivity and crossing two sensitive dogs. On other sites I read that dogs were screened for sensitivity prior to the test.

    PLEASE NOTE:  NONE of the things I read indicated that the researchers were looking for the "fatal" dose for a dog. In other words, they weren't trying to max out the dosage to see how much would kill a dog. They seemed to be trying to test increasingly higher dosages to make sure an accidental overdose wouldn't kill a dog---but not an unreasonably high overdose.  In my quick look I did NOT see any tests which resulted in the deaths of dogs.

    Here is an abstract of a study that used collies.

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TD7-4C605YN-3&_user=10&_coverDate=05%2F26%2F2004&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=759d44a1f4cb466601aae4f5e7d0c0d8