For the last 15–20 years, stories have reached the Health & Genetics Committee about Deerhounds having liver disease and/or blood clots, usually in the portal vein or spleen. Many times, these conditions were only diagnosed when the dogs were necropsied. In 2024, we gathered enough reports to start to look into this, and a dog with both of these problems was also biopsied. This proposal was approved by the Board in early 2025:
Photo by Mary Ann Rose
Liver Disease/Thrombosis Project Proposal
We have been gathering information—mostly necropsies—about cases of liver disease and portal vein and/or splenic thrombosis (blood clots) in Deerhounds for a few years now, and there appear to be some similarities among many of the cases. This year, a liver biopsy was performed on a dog with both of these conditions, and the resulting samples were examined by a liver pathology specialist, who determined that the changes pointed toward a recently identified disorder in dogs called ductal plate malformation (DPM).*
DPM is a disorder of liver development; however, symptoms—if any occur—may not show up until a dog is mature. This whole area of liver disease is relatively new and only now being studied.
The first order of business is to see whether the cases we’ve been collecting have DPM* or not. We have contacted the liver pathology specialist who reviewed the biopsy mentioned above, Dr. Mason C. Jager, and he is interested in reviewing liver disease cases in Deerhounds. Dr. Jager runs the Hepatopathology Specialty Service at Cornell University Vet School. Here is more information about Dr. Jager and the service.
We would like to submit slides of liver tissue from Deerhounds to him for his review. We plan to do this for twenty or more Deerhounds previously identified through biopsy or necropsy as having liver disease as well as several Deerhounds that don’t appear to have liver disease. Assuming what we learn justifies doing so, we intend to publish what we learn about liver disease in the breed to alert practicing veterinarians. We also hope that our initial learnings might lead to further research into liver disease.
Our plan is to contact the facilities where the other liver disease cases were necropsied to arrange for slides to be made available for review.
Budget: Dr. Jager’s fees are attached; we will be paying $62.50/case, with some cases possibly needing up to three additional stains at an additional $35/stain. Additionally, some of the labs will charge us for processing and/or shipping samples, and, moving forward, we’d like to offer people who go out of their way to send us samples the same $150 towards tissue collection expenses as we have offered people in the Holter Study. Therefore, we are asking for $5000 to be set aside for this project to cover these expenses. We had anticipated this expense in our budget planning with Mark last fall — this is not an additional expense.
Results from this study, which includes more than 20 cases, are expected sometime in 2025.
* * As we have started this study, we are now unsure whether the biopsied dog had DPM.
DEPOH/Factor VII Status
We are collecting DEPOH/Factor VII status information on all of the dogs in the study to see what relationships, if any, between these bleeding disorders and the liver/thrombus disease, exist.
Liver Shunt Puppies
We want to see if there is any relationship between what is going on in adult Deerhounds and the congenital liver shunts that have been seen in the breed for decades. To that end, we would appreciate liver samples from puppies or dogs diagnosed with a congenital liver shunt when these dogs pass on.
Help the Study!
We are just beginning to learn about this condition, so the more information we can gather, the better. If your dog has been diagnosed with a liver problem or a thrombus or congenital liver shunt, we want to hear from you! Please contact us to tell us about your experience. We’d also love any vet or diagnostic records.
We are also still collecting biopsy and necropsy reports and, if possible, tissue samples. And we are paying people up to $150 to send us tissue samples when their dog (both dogs that have liver/thrombus problems and healthy dogs) pass on. For more information on how you can participate in this research, click here.