Genetic diseases with simple modes of inheritance
Exercise Induced Collapse (EIC)
What is EIC?
Exercise Induced Collapse is a neuromucsular disorder that causes muscle weakness after strenuous exercise.
What are the symptoms?
Most dogs with EIC will appear normal during low to moderate exercise but will become wobbly and may collapse after 5-20 minutes of strenuous exercise. Dogs normally remain alert during episodes however confusion, loss of consciousness, seizures and in rare cases death can occur. Most dogs are diagnosed before 3 years of age.
Is there a treatment?
Care should be taken to make sure that dogs that are affected with EIC do not participate in activities that require intense exercise. in some instances, it seems that high environmental temperatures seem to aggravate the situation.
Genetic testing & our breeding program
We test ALL of our breeding dogs for EIC and use the results to plan matings to ensure that no “at risk” puppies are produced.
Since we use genetic results to plan matings and neither “clear” or “carrier” individuals will develop the bleeding disorder we have not eliminated all carrier individuals from our breeding program. We do not have any EIC at risk or affected dogs in our breeding program.
Just like with other genetic diseases in Corgis, we are focused on creating a great dog overall and are not willing to sacrifice quality.
So for us, we will continue to test all dogs in our breeding program and use this data to plan matings so that no “at risk” puppies will be produced.
We can perform an individual EIC test on a puppy through Gensol for $30 and will work with breeders to help them select dogs with a EIC status that fits their program.
What genetics are involved?
The gene involved is DNM1 on chromosome 9.
Just like with DM and vWD1, dogs inherit one copy of this gene from each parent. This disease is a recessive autosomal genetic disease meaning that for a dog to be affected it must inherit 2 copies of the mutation however this mutation is incompletely penetrant therefore not all dogs with 2 copies of the mutation will develop the disease.
Three scenarios may occur
1. A dog may inherit a normal gene from both parents.
These dogs are often called “clear” because they are not at risk of developing EIC themselves nor can they pass on a mutated gene to their offspring.
2. A dog may inherit a normal gene from one parent and a mutated gene from the other parent.
These dogs are called “carriers”. They are not at risk of developing the disease themselves but they can pass on a mutation to their offspring, therefore, they should be bred to an EIC clear individual to prevent the chance of producing offspring that may be affected.
3. A dog may inherit 2 mutated genes.
These dogs are called “at risk” and may or may not develop signs of the disease.
For breeders, at-risk individuals will always pass on a copy of this mutation to their offspring so affected individuals must only be bred to EIC clear mates so that at-risk dogs are not produced.
