Glaucoma Research News

Update September 30th, 2011

Dandie Dinmont Terrier glaucoma research update
Using a genome-wide mapping approach with canine-specific markers we have identified a novel glaucoma locus to canine chromosome 8 in Dandie Dinmont Terrier dog breed with a late-onset disease. The overall associated region is large covering about 10 Mb of sequence but fine-mapping narrowed the best haplotype to a 2 Mb critical region.

We have currently performed a re-sequencing analysis of the whole 2 Mb critical region known to be associated with glaucoma. The re-sequencing included 2 affected case and 2 healthy control dogs. The results of the re-sequencing data reveal over 3000 variants in each of the re-sequenced samples. After comparing the data between cases and controls we did not find any variants that found explain glaucoma in DDTs. Based on this we decided to increase the studied region and re-sequence almost the whole large region. These results will be available for us in a few months and they hopefully will reveal more information about the disease.

At the moment we have 428 samples from Dandien Dinmont Terriers. Of these 34 are affected with glaucoma. New samples are still being collected. Especially samples from glaucoma affected dogs are very important for the research.

Saija Ahonen, MSc
Department of Basic Veterinary Sciences and Medical Genetics
University of Helsinki and
Folkhälsan Institute of Genetics