Bile Acid Test
answered by Dr. Karen Tobias
Question:
I know that the ideal age for bile acid testing would be over 6 months. I also am aware that this test is not conclusive. I want to test all of my puppies in litters but would need to do this between 10 weeks and 12 weeks of age. Am I wasting time and money at this age or do you feel this would give us some sort of insight into the normalcy of each puppy? I, of course, would also include a guarantee against this defect but I would never sell a puppy that was "suspect" and break a family's heart.
Answer:
Unfortunately
there have been no studies on the "ideal" age for bile acids testing.
There has been one pediatric study that looked at healthy puppies and found that
their bile acids stayed the same from 4 weeks of age onward. Here's what
we've seen:
We have repaired shunts in puppies as young as 9 weeks of age, so we know that
their bile acids can be abnormal that early in life.
We have had several puppies that have had "reasonably normal" bile acids (not in
the normal range but less than 25) at 6 or 8 weeks of age that have had
bile acids of 40 at 6 months of age when they were spayed or castrated.
These dogs had congenital portal hypoplasia (MVD) on liver biopsy.
We have had puppies with almost normal bile acids (< 15) at 6 months of age that
have had MVD on liver biopsies.
We have had shunt puppies that have had normal fasting bile acids and high
fed bile acids or that have had normal fed bile acids and high fasting
bile acids. Fed bile acids are supposed to be higher than fasting bile
acids because the gallbladder contracts after a fatty meal and releases bile.
We think that about 20% of dogs have gallbladder contractions in the middle of
the night, which reverses their samples (the fasting sample is really a "fed"
sample, because the gallbladder contracts as if the dog ate).
As you can see, there is a lot of variation with bile acids. If I were trying to
rule out shunts, I would feel comfortable testing bile acids at 10 or 12 weeks
of age. If I were trying to rule out MVD, I wouldn't count on any blood
tests to do that.
If I were able to get a population of Yorkies and follow them from 8 weeks of
age to 1 year, I would love to do the bile acids study. Unfortunately, all
it would tell us is whether bile acids change. What we really need to do
is to get liver biopsies when the dogs are spayed or castrated as well. We
are going to apply for funding for such a study so that we can offer free liver
biopsies and bile acids to healthy Yorkies being spayed or castrated.
Maybe we'll be able answer your questions if we can get this study going.
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