# Cancer research, GRCA, and Dalmations



## CatGuy (Jun 14, 2018)

I was researching things on the GRCA website and read this:

https://www.grca.org/about-the-breed/health-research/understanding-cancer-in-golden-retrievers/

Which I thought was very informative... but I believe I saw it was written in GRNews in 2006? I was wondering if there were any other good sources that were more current. I imagine a few things have changed.

One thing I thought interesting was she mentioned Dalmations as a somewhat cautionary tale. They outcrossed with a pointer to try to eleminate a serious genetic disease back in 1973. At the time there was no genetic test of course. It was quite a battle but eventually, after something like 15 generations of backcrossing and the genetic test making it more workable, the “LUA” (low uric acid) dalmations were allowed by the breed associations in 2011. But in the 2006 article above, it was used as an example of how outcrossing could not be used to solve genetic diseases in a breed.

I wonder, how might this play out in the GRCA today, if research found the gene(s) responsible for cancer in goldens? Some of the resistance appeared to be based on keeping the pedigree pure, and that the LUA dalmations were not. How many backcrossing generations would it take? Perhaps the LUA precedent would make breeders more open to the idea? I also wonder that if outcrossing is never done, wouldn’t the breed simply become more inbred over time, a higher COI, with a smaller and smaller gene pool?

I suppose one hope for the future might be gene editing to precisely remove the gene(s). But I’m sure that would be a whole different can of worms for breed associations.

Here’s a page giving a rundown of the LUA history:

https://luadalmatians-world.com/enus/dalmatian-articles/crossbreeding


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## cwag (Apr 25, 2017)

That is a very interesting article by Rhonda Hovan. I am not a breeder so I don't know anything about what is debated regarding outcrossing, I just love Goldens and want mine to live as long as possible. Thanks for sharing the article.


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