BREEDING HISTORY OF THE STANFORD COLONY OF NARCOLEPTIC DOGS

Narcolepsy is a disabling sleep disorder of unknown aetiology, In huma ns, the disease is mostly sporadic, with a few familial cases having b een reported, In 1973 a sporadic case of narcolepsy was reported in a poodle, and in 1975 familial cases of narcolepsy occurred in dobermann s. As with human narcoleptics, these narcoleptic dogs exhibited excess ive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy. A colony of narcoleptic dogs was established at Stanford University in 1976 to study the pathophysiolo gy of the disease, Between 1976 and 1995, a total of 669 animals of va rious breeds were born, of which 487 survived. Dobermanns accounted fo r 78 per cent of the total, The narcolepsy genotype in dobermanns had no significant influence on puppy mortality rate (numbers of stillborn and survival rate), The sex, maternal parity or the age of the sire o r dam had no significant effect. The percentage of stillborn puppies i ncreased from 6.1 per cent in outbred litters to 15.4 per cent in inbr ed litters (P=0.10). Birth season also had a significant effect, and t he highest survival rate (P=0.02), and the lowest percentage of stillb orn puppies (P=0.09) occurred between April and June.