Canine Genetic Wrinkle Has Human Potential

By SINDYA N. BHANOO

Shar-peis are an ancient Chinese dog breed characterized by two singular traits: thick, wrinkly skin and frequent bouts of fever. Researchers now say that the same gene mutation is responsible for both the wrinkles and the fever.

“All shar-pei dogs have this mutation that causes the wrinkles, but the more copies they have, the higher the risk to have this fever,” said Mia Olsson, a doctoral student at Uppsala University in Sweden who worked on the study. The research appears in the journal PLoS Genetics.

It was already known that the wrinkles were a result of excess production of a substance called hyaluronic acid distributed throughout the dogs’ skin. That excess is likely caused by to the overactivation of a gene called hyaluronan synthase 2.

Dogs that carry multiple mutations of the gene seem predisposed to periodic fever, Ms. Olsson and her colleagues reported. Although the fever is short-lived, it can be intense and frequent, and cause inflammation.

With more information, breeders might be able to avoid breeding shar-peis that have duplications of the gene mutation, Ms. Olsson said. The research was conducted with the help of breeders in the United States, Sweden and Spain.

“Our highest priority right now is to see if there’s some way to create some kind of test or tool to reduce the number of dogs with the fevers,” she said.

The fever closely resembles certain periodic fevers that humans inherit, and studying the mutation in the dogs could help human geneticists develop treatments.

The most common periodic fever among humans is known as

. It tends to affect people of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern descent, and there is no cure.