Browsing by Subject "nivelapuaineet"

The aim of this study was to see if there is an association between nutrition at young age and the dog’s hip screening results of either severe canine hip dysplasia (CHD) or healthy hips at the age of 18 months. This study was part of a wider CHD study in Finland which aim is to locate genes affecting development of CHD in different breeds and to find environmental factors influencing the development and the clinical sings of CHD. The literature review consists of a general overview on canine hip dysplasia and an overview on nutritional substances that have or might have an influence on the development of CHD. The clinical study part was conducted as an epidemiological explorative case-control study. The hypothesis in this study was that feeding raw food could protect large-breed dogs from CHD. This hypothesis was based on results from a pilot questionnaire that was done earlier. Canine hip dysplasia is one of the most common orthopaedic problems seen in small animal practice. It is an inherited, developmental condition leading to osteoarthritis. Additionally to genetic factors, there is also evidence that several environmental factors such as nutrition are contributing to the development of the disease. Especially overfeeding has been shown to increase the risk for CHD. In general, the feeding of commercial food for growing large-breed puppies is advised, but there is only a minimal amount of information available about the influence of other feeding methods on developmental orthopaedic diseases, even though it nowadays is more common among dog owners to choose to feed their dogs with more unconventional diets such as the bone and raw food (BARF) and home prepared diets. The DOGRISK questionnaire database was used and all German Shepherd Dogs with official hip screening results and adequate reported diet data were eligible for the statistical analyses. The time windows of interest in this study were the feeding at the age of 2-6 and >6-18 months. Results were analyzed by cross tabulating using Pearson Chi-square test, Mann-Whitney U-test and the Principal component analysis. This study suggest that feeding a bone and raw food diet (BARF) or raw meat, raw offal, raw bone and raw cartilage, raw fish, raw egg and raw tripe as a supplementation to other diets or as a part of the BARF diet showed protective effect vis a vis CHD. The study also suggests that feeding cooked meat, bone and cartilage might increase the risk of CHD. Feeding of dry commercial food was common in both the case and control groups and did not show any association to CHD in this study. The proportion of BARF food fed in puppyhood, on the contrary, showed a significant difference between hip dysplastic and non-dysplastic dogs in both age groups, indicating that even if only a part of the dog’s diet is raw food, it could already help protect puppies from CHD. Further analyses as well as clinical trials should be done next to test these results.