Product Description

Neonatal encephalopathy with seizures (NEWS)

Neonatal encephalopathy with seizures (NEWS) is autosomal recessive brain disease. Affected puppies are small and weak at birth. Many die in their first week of life. Those surviving past 1 week develop ataxia, a wholebody tremor, and, by 4 to 6 weeks of age, severe generalized clonic–tonic seizures. None survives to 7 weeks of age. Cerebella from affected puppies are reduced in size. Seizures associated with neonatal encephalopathies are often intractable to conventional antiepileptic drugs and often carry a grave prognosis. Dogs that fail to thrive and die within hours or days of birth because of an encephalopathy or a wide variety of other etiologies are often referred to as fading puppies. The disease is affecting and has been characterized among Poodles.

References:

Chen, X., Johnson, G.S., Schnabel, R.D., Taylor, J.F., Johnson, G.C., Parker, H.G., Patterson, E.E., Katz, M.L., Awano, T., Khan, S., et al. (2007). A neonatal encephalopathy with seizures in standard poodle dogs with a missense mutation in the canine ortholog of ATF2. Neurogenetics 9, 41–49.