One of the members of the research group posted this Myotonia in New Forest Ponies onto the group noticeboard, with the additional comment that all Dutch stallions are being tested and that the Swedish breeders are following suit. Myotonia is a much more 'dramatic', scary to see disease, than that of HWSS; any readers who have seen the videos of the 'fainting goats' on youtube will understand just how dramatic and the implicationsfor survival are, for a horse or pony.
The New Forest pony, like the Connemara Pony has a reducing genepool. As genepools condense the rising incidence of homozygosity results in a concomitant increase in the emergence of previously unexhibited genetic defects.
On the HWSS research, we await the results of further DNA research on a specific area of the genome. While this is happening the scientists at UC Davis are also working to extract the mRNA from the hooves of affected ponies. This work is to try and establish which proteins are being coded for in which part of the hoof. Once again it is a waiting game.
Sent us an email and not had a response??
The research group has over the past two months been contacted by several people from various parts of the world with notifications of new cases of HWSS. Replies have been sent (in some cases with suggestions on management issues) to every query made to the group. None of these people have subsequently made a reply or made further contact. As the research group uses a gmail account it is possible that our replies have been automatically filed into a recipient's spam folder. Please, if you have emailed the research group and not had a reply, please a) check your spam folder and b) email the group again and let us know that you have not received a reply to your intial email. A reply will have definitely been returned within 24 hours of receipt of the original enquiry.
Thank you
