4/6/2023 0 Comments Taurine deficiency in dogsThe heart becomes more like a flabby balloon than a powerful, muscular organ. This weakening can happen for a variety of reasons, but regardless of the underlying cause, the end result is a thinning of the walls of the heart. Cardiomyopathies are a group of diseases that affect the heart muscle, and DCM is one form of this type of problem. A variety of diseases can affect any of these parts. The heart has valves that help direct the flow of blood into and out of the heart muscle that contracts to pump blood throughout the body and blood vessels that supply the heart with nutrients and remove wastes. The heart is a complicated organ with lots of moving parts. However, recent reports in golden retrievers have veterinary cardiologists revisiting taurine and DCM in this breed.ĭilated cardiomyopathy in dogs – the basics Scattered reports of taurine deficient dogs with heart disease appeared in the veterinary literature, but the vast majority of dogs with DCM had normal taurine levels. Throughout the late 1980s and continuing through the 1990s, many veterinary cardiologists looked at a variety of nutrients, including taurine, in their canine patients with dilated cardiomyopathy. However, it quickly became apparent to veterinary cardiologists that DCM in dogs was not going to have a tidy resolution. Soon after the Science article was published, there was a flurry of research looking for a similar link between nutrition and DCM in other species, including dogs. Adjustments to commercial cat diets soon followed, and since publication of the article 30 years ago, dilated cardiomyopathy in domestic cats has almost completely disappeared.Īs omnivores, the story for dogs isn’t quite so elegant. This makes perfect sense because taurine is an amino acid that is abundant in meat so carnivores (like cats) never developed the ability to make their own taurine and must get it from their diet. The veterinary community was stunned not only because this was a new report of a dietary nutrient and heart disease, but that the disease was reversible when taurine was added to the diet of affected cats. Veterinarians in the School of Veterinary Medicine at University of California, Davis, reported that a deficiency of taurine, an amino acid, was responsible for the development of dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), a form of heart muscle disease, in cats. September 17, 2017 – In 1987, a remarkable article was published in the prestigious journal, Science.
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