Liver Shunt?

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Liver Shunt?
Topic Started: Oct 1 2008, 10:55 AM (306 Views)
Post #1 Oct 1 2008, 10:55 AM	Sheila Mesick
I have a friend that breeds Tibbies. She kept the records for Bile Acid tests for several years and a couple of years ago turned the records over to a vet at Cornell that is doing research on it. She just told me that liver shunt is a problem in Russell Terriers. I never realized this. Do any of you do the bile acid test? Should we be doing it? I ofa and cerf my dogs now but I have not done the bile acid tests. Sheila	Pup Posts: 106 Group: Russell Enthusiasts Member #554 Joined: October 15, 2006



Post #2 Oct 1 2008, 07:05 PM	Ruscal
I think the disease is more prevalent than many people realize and why I started asking questions and finding out that more than just one or two litters have produced liver shunt. After a lot of reading I realize the disease is hereditary, but there is no agreement about the mode of inheritance yet. They document it is being Polygenic so far... It has shown up in multiple cases both in Australia and the USA so not as rare a problem as people seem to believe. I and others have contacted the Animal Health Trust to see if we can get them interested in studying this problem in Jack Russells and hopefully locate a marker. xo	Active Dog Posts: 2,266 Group: Russell Enthusiasts Member #768 Joined: September 6, 2007



Post #3 Oct 1 2008, 11:15 PM	Rolling Hill
There are quite a number of breeds in which a PSS can show up...the most common one being the Yorkshire Terrier. The cases that I've seen have been a Maltese, a few Yorkies, a mixed breed terrier, and a mixed breed cat. The only time I would run a bile acid test is if I thought a puppy was abnormal. Signs that you might notice include: failure to grow/thrive, seizures, dementia (circling, head pressing, aggression, etc.). The first case I ever diagnosed was in Yorkie and her only symptom was that she weighed exactly the same at 8 months as she did at 4 months...somewhere around 2-3 pounds, I think. Her owner had no complaints though. Her shunt was huge when they went in to repair it. They have a PSS Yorkie breeding program at the UTCVM. The pups are raised with a foster family and our clinic did some vaccines on two pups produced by affected parents. Neither pup had a shunt. The next plan was to breed father/daughter, mother/son. I hadn't heard what became of that. UTCVM Liver Shunt Site PSS Heritability PSS Q&A	Part of the Pack Posts: 2,816 Group: Russell Enthusiasts Member #17 Joined: July 26, 2005



Post #4 Oct 1 2008, 11:41 PM	Liz Mc
Quote: Do any of you do the bile acid test? Should we be doing it? Several of us have been discussing this lately. I know that Rita Francis-Little does test ALL of her pups regardless of whether they are going as pets or as show/breeding prospects. It is just one of the things she tests every pup in every litter for and says she will continue to do so. I think once a breeder produces a problem they aren't going to feel comfortable not testing. I agree that the problem isn't as rare as some people assume it is. I am grateful to the honest breeders who have discovered they have produced a pup with this problem and have come forward to inform others. It's the only way breeders are made aware of problems in this breed. Am I going to start testing all pups? I honestly haven't decided. We BAER all pups in every litter, annually CERF all of our adults, have patellas and hips checked and hearts checked. I generally pull a thyroid profile on all of my breeding adults annually. I'm talking to several vets about the cost of doing the acid bile test on litters of pups to see what kind of cost I can expect. It makes me very uncomfortable to think about selling a pup to someone and having the problem crop up at several months of age. Should this be a routine test? I don't know.	Mellow Dog Posts: 409 Group: Admin Member #786 Joined: November 8, 2007 Last Name Liz First Name McKinney



Post #5 Oct 2 2008, 12:52 AM	Australian Lindy
What a pleasure this thread is to read. A refreshing, open and honest discussion about a genetic disease in our breed. I have made enquiries with some QLD veterinary clinics and the lowest price quoted for the bile acid test was $95. Vets in NSW seem to be able to perform the same test for less than half that price. The cost variation is set by the individual labs who process the blood.	Mellow Dog Posts: 192 Group: Russell Enthusiasts Member #875 Joined: July 20, 2008 How did you locate this forum? friend Last Name donato First Name lindy



Post #6 Oct 4 2008, 02:37 PM	Minna Tallberg
I was just talking to the vet - well actually three vets - about testing, and their consensus was that unless there are symptoms, testing is mostly useless. In some cases, the test would reveal the shunt a week or two before the symptoms would appear, but in young puppies, a clear test is no guarantee that they won't have a shunt problem later on. One of our British imports was diagnosed with a liver shunt at 9 months old. There has also been a worrying incidence of liver shunts (I think 3 shunts in puppies by the same stud dog out of 2 separate females) that seem to be definitely hereditary - you can email me for the name of the dog, it's 100% Australian lines. Minna	Pup Posts: 17 Group: Russell Enthusiasts Member #851 Joined: May 17, 2008



Post #7 Oct 4 2008, 04:54 PM	Casmara/JR
Quote: Minna says: I was just talking to the vet - well actually three vets - about testing, and their consensus was that unless there are symptoms, testing is mostly useless. This thread prompted me to ask my vet the same question. His reply was much the same. Edited by Casmara/JR, Oct 4 2008, 04:58 PM.	Part of the Pack Posts: 4,373 Group: Russell Enthusiasts Member #206 Joined: October 6, 2005



Post #8 Oct 5 2008, 02:20 AM	Australian Lindy
I'm of the understanding that the bile acid test performed on a litter of young pups will determine if liver shunt is present in any of the pups. Liver shunt is not a late onset disease like PLL. I know a dog who was diagnosed with liver shunt at 9 months. This dog appeared normal in all respects apart from the fact that it was smaller and quieter than its litter mates. Had the dog been bile acid tested as a pup, I believe the disease would have been picked up immediately. If that is not the case, then there is no point in any of us testing pups at 8 weeks. I hope Melissa can clarify for us when she returns from Montgomery.	Mellow Dog Posts: 192 Group: Russell Enthusiasts Member #875 Joined: July 20, 2008 How did you locate this forum? friend Last Name donato First Name lindy



Post #9 Oct 5 2008, 12:57 PM	Rolling Hill
I didn't get to go to MCKC. I had to work this weekend plus I don't have any more vacation days left. A single extrahepatic shunt can be diagnosed with a pre- and post-prandial bile acid test no matter what the age of the dog or whether it has symptoms. The disease is an abnormal blood vessel that bypasses the liver and it is there at birth. There is no way for a dog with a PSS to have a normal bile acid test. The reason obvious symptoms my not show up until later can be due to how the dog is fed, what medications it may be on for other reasons (lots of owners notice how good their dogs feel when on antibiotics), or the severity of the shunt. For breeding purposes, I would think one would notice a problem with a PSS dog long before they ever considered breeding it. You may not notice something is amiss for quite a few months but, eventually, something would show up that made you notice the dog wasn't "quite right". It is at that point that I would do a bile acid test. If the pup was diagnosed with a PSS, then testing the parents and siblings would be in order. More than likely, the parents would be normal or might just have mild microvasular dysplasia (esp. if they were Yorkies). Regardless of their results, it would be best to not breed from the parents again nor the siblings to the affected pup. If you want to make sure that you never sell a pup to anyone that has a liver shunt or choose to work with a line that has produced liver shunts, then bile acid testing before they go to their new homes would be the best choice. Since liver shunts in JRTs don't show up that often (compared to breeds like Yorkies and Maltese), I would consider it equally as responsible to sell pups untested as long as they appear healthy and you are willing to replace the pup or refund the purchase price if the pup does turn out abnormal. If I were spending a lot of money to purchase and import a pup under a year of age, then it would be best to have it tested before shipping. Here is a nice explanation of the bile acids test: Quote: The Bile Acid Test is one that measures how the liver functions and performs (as opposed to an enzyme level, that can indicate degree of inflammation or damage). The dog is fasted, blood is drawn, then 2 hours later, the dog is fed a fatty meal and the blood is drawn again. The blood tests measure pre- and post- meal levels of bile acids, the acids stored by the gall bladder and secreted by the liver. When animals (humans included) eat and need the bile along with other digestive elements secreted by the pancreas, the gall bladder, a bile storage unit, contracts to release bile into the small intestine as needed for digestion. From there, the bile acids do their work and are then absorbed by the intestine into the liver (portal) blood and returned back to the liver. This is called Enterohepatic Circulation. Comparing the two blood levels (pre and post meal) allows the veterinarian to see how well the liver, bile ducts, and blood flow to the liver are functioning. Bile acids are removed from liver (portal) blood by the liver cells (hepatocytes). If the liver cells are not functioning well, the bile acids remain in circulation and enter the body (systemic) blood supply where they are measured by this test. So... if post-meal (or even in some cases, fasting) blood levels of bile acids are high, this means that the liver isn't doing its job of removing the bile acids from the blood as it should.	Part of the Pack Posts: 2,816 Group: Russell Enthusiasts Member #17 Joined: July 26, 2005



Post #10 Oct 5 2008, 03:10 PM	Christina Areskough
Thank you Melissa for the explanation, you are a rock! What would we do whitout you! Christina	Mellow Dog Posts: 153 Group: Russell Enthusiasts Member #285 Joined: December 17, 2005



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