The Standard Poodle Club Open Registers.
With thanks to standardpoodledatabase.com
This register contains an A-Z listing of Standard Poodles who have been diagnosed by a Veterinary Surgeon with
Sebaceous Adenitis (SA) through a skin biopsy.
Owner's permission has been obtained and the breeder is aware.
A printed version will be available from SPC stand at Crufts and our Open and Champ Shows.
Please advise our Breed Health Cordinator of any new SA results via this form HERE.
Pedigrees of Standard Poodles with SA are listed alphabetically below.
Updated 3rd June 2022
(A-F).
(G-L).
(M-R).
(S-Z).
Welcome to the Standard Poodle Club’s health registry update on Sebaceous Adenitis. I would like to thank each person reading this for playing an important role in our breed’s health and hope that you find this to be a helpful tool in planning for healthy litters in the future. The goal of this tool is to allow information about Sebaceous Adenitis disease and to be used to make informed decisions on matings, allowing us to reduce the risk of producing affected pups while we await research into identifying genetic markers for these diseases.
SEBACEOUS ADENITIS
Sebaceous adenitis involves inflammation and loss of sebaceous glands, when functioning normally these glands serve moisturise and protect the skin and hair shaft. As a result, SA causes dry skin, scaling and hair loss. While it is a mostly cosmetic disease, it can cause bacterial infections of the skin as well, causing pruritus (itching), foul odour and discomfort to the dog. As with Addison’s disease, SA appears to be inherited as a recessive gene however a specific genetic test has not yet been identified.
The onset of SA tends to be very slow, with progressive hair loss, dull coat and developing yellow/brown or silvery/white scaley skin. The hair will easily matt up (not to be mistaken for coat change) and fall or can be pulled out in clumps. As mentioned above, itchiness and malodour can occur when the damaged skin becomes infected and as such treating these infections is an important part of treating the disease.
Diagnosis can be suspected from visual inspection of the skin and examining hair pluckings, however definitive diagnosis needs a biopsy of the affected skin. This allows a pathologist to look at the inflammation surrounding the sebaceous gland, and in end stage cases to observe a lack of sebaceous glands. Skin biopsies have recently be removed from the Standard Poodle Club’s list of mandatory health tests on the grounds of the test being too invasive to perform on healthy breeding dogs on a frequent basis once the dog has been tested healthy by biopsy. The signs of sebaceous adenitis can be clearly seen on visual examination of the skin of a clinically affected dog and the diagnosis confirmed by biopsy as is required by the SPC Open Registry for Sebacious Adenitis.
Treatment involves managing any bacterial infections, regular bathing with medicated shampoo containing exfoliants to help prevent buildup of scale, use of conditioners and moisturisers to restore and maintain the skin and hair, and the addition of essential fatty acids to the diet.
Apart from the potential discomfort caused by secondary bacterial infections, sebaceous adenitis is primarily a cosmetic disease that does not negatively affect an affected poodle’s quality of life. While management is labour intensive, it is possible to achieve some regrowth of lost coat, however they will never have the luscious thick coat we know our poodles for. For this reason, this tool in invaluable in aiding us to not breed poodles together with a close family history of SA on both sides.
Thank you once again for reading and getting involved in our goal to improve the health of our already wonderfully healthy breed. We hope you find this tool useful and would greatly appreciate it being shared with any standard poodle owners and breeders you may know to enable us to widen our database of dogs.
Dr. Kate Bleasdale BVMedSci BVM BVS MRCVS
With special thanks to Molly Windebank without whose dedication to the Standard Poodle this registry would not be possible.