Nonsyndromic Hearing Loss (Rottweiler Type)

Common Symptoms

Nonsyndromic Hearing Loss (Rottweiler Type) is an early-onset, inherited hearing disorder in dogs. Affected dogs may present during the first weeks of life with hearing deficits. By 4 months of age deafness can be diagnosed by a veterinarian using an brainstem auditory evoked response (BAER) testing. There are no other clinical abnormalities in affected dogs, and they live otherwise normal lives.

Testing Tips

Genetic testing of the LOXHD1 gene will reliably determine whether a dog is a genetic Carrier of Nonsyndromic Hearing Loss (Rottweiler Type). Nonsyndromic Hearing Loss (Rottweiler Type) is inherited in an Autosomal Recessive manner in dogs meaning that they must receive two copies of the mutated gene (one from each parent) to develop the disease. In general, carrier dogs do not have features of the disease but when bred with another carrier of the same Mutation, there is a risk of having affected pups. Each pup that is born to this pairing has a 25% chance of inheriting the disease and a 50% chance of inheriting one copy and being a carrier of the LOXHD1 gene mutation. Reliable genetic testing is important for determining breeding practices. In order to eliminate this mutation from breeding lines and to avoid the potential of producing affected pups, breeding of known carriers to each other is not recommended. Dogs that are not carriers of the mutation have no increased risk of having affected pups.

There may be other causes of this condition in dogs and a normal result does not exclude a different mutation in this gene or any other gene that may result in a similar genetic disease or trait.

References

• Hytönen MK, Niskanen JE, Arumilli M, Brookhart-Knox CA, Donner J, Lohi H. Missense variant in LOXHD1 is associated with canine nonsyndromic hearing loss. Hum Genet. 2021 Nov;140(11):1611-1618. [PubMed: 33983508]