This page courtesy of http://www.premiercavalierinfosite.com

Genetic Diversity and Health

Here are links to many articles regarding the impact loss of genetic diversity has had on the immune system in purebred dogs over the years.  A must for all breeders or wanna-be breeders.  Also interesting to intellectual types who just enjoy learning about the intricacies of attempting to breed purebred dogs while retaining health.

The following websites are or have articles regarding the direct consequences to the immune system due to inbreeding.  Note--geneticists consider line-breeding to be a form of inbreeding as well.  In fact they consider nearly all purebred dog breeding to be inbreeding.

http://cc.ysu.edu/~helorime/inbredgen.html

http://members.tripod.com/~Marge_S_2/nonframes/geneticsandhealth.htm
This particular site goes into a bit of detail regarding the loss of MHC in Akitas due to inbreeding.
MHC regulates the bodies immune system.  It MUST be genetically diverse for good immune system function.  In Akitas, the one breed which has been checked, they have found only 7 of the
possible 32 MHC genes.  MHC is Major Histiocompatability Complex.

Here is a whole series of articles regarding breeding and genetic diversity.

www.canine-genetics.com/ -- this particular site has some interesting longevity studies

www.magmacom.com/~kaitlin/diversity/genetics.html

Here are several more websites that are also very interesting:

www.lhasa-apso.org/health/divrsity.htm

www.boxerunderground.com/bu2000/mar2000/importing.htm

www.workingdogs.com/doc0192.htm

www.netpets.org/cats/reference/genetics/load.html

More will be added as time goes by.  Check back from time to time.