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Canine Eye Registration Foundation (CERF)
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WHAT IS CERF?
The Canine Eye Registration Foundation (CERF) is an organization that was founded by a group of concerned, purebred owner/breeders who recognized that the quality of their dog's lives were being affected by heritable eye disease. CERF was then established in conjunction with cooperating, board certified, veterinary ophthalmologists, as a means to accomplish the goal of elimination of heritable eye disease in all purebred dogs by forming a centralized, national registry.
The CERF Registry not only registers those dog's certified free of heritable eye disease by members of the American College of Veterinary Ophthalmologists (A.C.V.O. ), but also collects data on all dogs examined by A.C.V.O. Diplomates. This data is used to form the CERF data base which is useful in researching trends in eye disease and breed susceptibility. Not only is this data useful to clinicians and students of ophthalmology, but to interested breed clubs and individual breeders and owners of specific breeds.
For more information on CERF, visit their website at http://www.vmdb.org/history.html
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Progressive Retinal Atrophy (PRA)
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What is PRA?
This is a genetic, inherited disease of the retina (the "film" in the camera), which occurs in both eyes simultaneously. The disease is nonpainful, and there is no cure for it. The eyes are genetically programmed to go blind. PRA occurs in most breeds of dogs and can occur in mixed breeds also. It is recessively inherited in all breeds studied, with the following exceptions: PRA is dominantly inherited in Old English Mastiffs and Bullmastiffs, and PRA is sex-linked and found primarily in male dogs in the Siberian Husky and Samoyed breeds.
For more information go to http://www.animaleyecare.net/diseases/pra.htm |
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