Dr. Judy Morgan 0:00
Hello pet parents, welcome to the naturally healthy pets podcast where we empower and educate you to be the best advocate for your pets giving them a happier, healthier life. Are you confused about all the overwhelming information out there about your pet's health, nutrition and overall wellness, or you're in the right place? I'm your host, Dr. Judy Morgan, an integrative veterinarian, author and speaker. Join me for an exciting show where you'll discover the healthy options for raising your pets in a more holistic manner. Find out the answers to your questions during the short and succinct episodes where I chat with experts in the industry and showcase the latest products that will help your pet stay naturally healthy. So let's get to it.
My guest today is Dr. Jean Dodds, and she has spent more than five decades as a clinical research veterinarian. She has amazing information. She started Hemopet in 1986, which today offers a wide range of nonprofit surfaces and educational activities. And that is www.hemopet.org. She has written 175 scientific articles, 2 popular award winning pet health books together with Diana Laverdure. And with a third one in press and she holds 27 patents, we should bow down we are with royalty. I am so impressed. Jean, you have it the first of all, thank you so much for agreeing to do this podcast. But you have so many brain cells functioning all the time, I feel like I need to up my game or turn on the game. I don't know.
Dr. Jean Dodds 1:44
Thank you, Judy, you know, when your husband's a patent attorney, it's relatively easy to learn how to how to write patents and get patents because you listen to him when he creates them for other clients. So
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:55
Well, there you go. I did not realize that. So that's a great little tidbit. So all we have to do is go find a patent attorney. Well, I happen to live with an architect. So I get pretty pictures and house designs, which you know, that works, too. So, today, we want to talk about One Health. And this is something that I don't think I ever heard that term until maybe in the past 10 years, and it started popping up at veterinary meetings and, and conferences. And we could start hearing lectures and reading about One Health. So can you just give everybody a quick overview? What is One hHealth?
Dr. Jean Dodds 2:34
Well, actually, you know, it's a catch all term that's become very popular worldwide. But it doesn't just apply to medicine. It applies to agriculture, to farming, to the ecosystem, to global warming, to all of the things that affect the air, the earth and the sea. And so we all live together in this planet, and we need to save it. That's what it's about.
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:57
Awesome. So today, we're going to narrow it down a little bit. And what we want to talk about is Comparative Medicine, specifically in people and dogs. Is it true that dogs and people share a lot of the same DNA?
Dr. Jean Dodds 3:16
Yes, we do. Dogs and people were actually very close together in terms of the kinds of things that they share. Because after all, after domestication from the wolf, the dog became our companion, as have cats and horses now. But the dog followed us and in order to adapt it had to learn to eat the scraps of things that we had leftover, and it had to learn to adapt to us. But interestingly, the dog's personality had something to do with it as well.
Dr. Judy Morgan 3:49
So how, what, what kind of things are we looking at? When we're comparing people to dogs? Like how are we using things that we're finding in human medicine? To treat dogs? Are we using things that we're finding in veterinary medicine to treat treat people? Does it go both ways?
Dr. Jean Dodds 4:10
Well, both is true. But one of the ways before anything could be tried in human volunteers, we had to first test it in laboratory animals in in a laboratory setting. And that could be non human primates or dogs and cats, although most of them were in mice and rats, because they were more affordable. And there's been a huge issue of the welfare of those animals, as you know, over decades and thank God I was instrumental in being part of a community that helps regulate that as it is today. So once you have it in the experimental setting, we then take it into the clinical setting in veterinary medicine. And that's where companion animals and domestic farm animals became very important to lead the way to doing parallel clinical trials in humans.
Dr. Judy Morgan 4:58
Amazing and are their specific fields where this is being used more? And it is it is it more common to see these parallels with infectious disease with cancer with genetic disease or pretty much across the board?
Dr. Jean Dodds 5:18
It's basically everything. There's been a huge emphasis, of course on cancer. inherited diseases are very, very important. The parallel between the dog and certain disease states like dermatology, the microbiome, gastroenterology, the pancreas, the liver, the kidney, all of those and the brain, even all of those are more and more important in terms of using the parallel studies to look at non human primates and then humans.
Dr. Judy Morgan 5:47
Interesting. So there was I want to talk about cancer a little bit because there was actually something that was on national television on 60 Minutes interviewing a veterinarian at the University of Pennsylvania. And when I practiced in New Jersey, we're very close to the University of Pennsylvania. So we use them for our, you know, our internal medicine cases, big surgery cases, and if anything that was kind of on a different realm of complicated, but one of the things that was stated in this article is that many cancers that naturally develop in dogs share important clinical biological and genetic features to those that develop in humans, making the dog a relevant immune competent model to accelerate the discovery of safe and effective treatments for both humans and dogs with cancer. So can you can you talk a little bit about this study that's been done and what they used and kind of what their results were because it was pretty fascinating.
Dr. Jean Dodds 6:52
Yeah, this by the way, this program aired on November 27, on 60 Minutes. It's still available online. So your, your listeners, our listeners can actually look at it. And Anderson Cooper interviewed the University of Pennsylvania scientist, Dr. Mason, who with her colleagues in 2016, looked at the fact that osteosarcoma specifically was over expressed when animals had a certain genetic predisposition and the same predisposition is present in people. Interesting, yes. And the way they found that out was there they used listeria, the infection that farm animals have that's relatively mild, minor, they lose Listeria monocytogenes the organism as a vector to transport the gene that was overexpressed in cancers, especially osteosarcoma, and this is the HER-2 gene. So the HER-2 gene, which was first studied at Jefferson University in Pennsylvania, in humans, by the way, and then also studied with Dr. Mason and her colleagues at the veterinary school. They found that the overexpression in many cancers was particularly strong in osteosarcoma, because the human and the dog share that same overexpression. And what happened was, in order to test the theory, they had to take human and dog cancer patients that did not do well with conventional chemotherapy and surgical removal or whatever. And they have a story on the 60 Minutes of a young woman who had was refractory to standard treatment had the lower part of her I think it was right leg and no left leg amputated and then became eligible for this new listeria vector trial. And what it does when you give the listeria vaccine with the HER-2 gene in it, it causes fever and Malaise for a short period of time. So the patient, dog and person gets some adverse reactions for a few days. And then it takes over and it's blocks the cancer from metastasizing and growing. And the end of the story shows this lady, this young woman playing football again, wow, soccer again. And so the same thing has occurred at the University of Pennsylvania in the canine osteosarcoma patients.
Dr. Judy Morgan 9:37
Yeah, I think I saw in there that it said that the dogs that were given the treatment lived two times longer than dogs that did not receive the treatment which when you have an osteosarcoma, which is bone cancer when you have an osteosarcoma diagnosis, that's not a good one, not a you know, usually I think clients are told well we can amputate the leg we can do chemo, we can do radiation, you do whatever. And you know, you've got two months and it's just never, ever a good situation.
Dr. Jean Dodds 10:08
It's a horrible, horrible tumor. The particular HER-2 gene is 40% overexpressed in osteosarcoma cancers. And you have to prevent the overexpression of this gene, which promotes the growth of the cancer. And what this whole vector HER-2 complex does is suppress the expression.
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:33
Now, the HER-2, I've always heard that in relation to breast cancer, like all the commercials on TV, they talk about HER-2 negative blah, blah, blah. So do you know if there are ongoing studies looking at mammary cancer in dogs and breast cancer in humans using something similar? It seems like if it if it works for this?
Dr. Jean Dodds 10:58
Yeah, no, definitely. Breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, gastrointestinal cancer, definitely. I'm sure there are studies going on in people whether they've started any trials yet in the dog, I don't know. I don't know. Because this is all relatively new. The fact that it actually worked.
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:16
Well, we need something that actually works, because our statistics for curing cancer are dismal.
Dr. Jean Dodds 11:22
Hemangiosarcoma Absolutely. Yeah.
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:27
Well, thank goodness for Turkey Tail. But that's about the only thing you know, from Pennsylvania again. Yeah, exactly. Because they did these studies on the initial im unity supplement, which was Turkey Tail mushroom. And they showed really good results for Hemangiosarcoma patients using only that therapy. So, you know, good news, there are some things coming down the pike. And interestingly, in the link to that 60 Minutes, story, they said that right now University of Pennsylvania has over three dozen clinical trials ongoing, and in all, all different kinds of disease problems, but they have 16 for naturally occurring cancers going on right now. And then you had sent me another link about management of liver cancer in humans and dogs looking at hepatic carcinoma, which is much more common in people than it is in dogs. But there's a big study on that going on at University of California at Davis. So is it is it pretty much across the board, like if someone were looking for, you know, clinical trials, research studies that, you know, they they've got this horrible diagnosis, and they're really worried. Do most of the veterinary colleges or universities have ongoing clinical trials like this? Do most of them do this sort of research?
Dr. Jean Dodds 13:02
Most of them do the liver thing is different, though, because it's very rare for the dog to get a hepatic carcinoma. In people it's more common as a C quelli, to alcoholic cirrhosis, for example, or other forms of cirrhosis of the liver, hepatitis. So even though the disease etiology, cause is different in people and the dog, the management and treatment is basically the same. So that's why it's One Health and essentially, you approach the disease in the two species in a similar manner to manage and control it.
Dr. Judy Morgan 13:36
Yeah. Now it's really interesting because I think it said that only .06 to 1.3% of dog cancer is hepatic carcinoma, whereas in humans, it's the sixth most common cancer and the third leading cancer death cause for people
Dr. Jean Dodds 13:54
well, if you look for the University of Texas, for example, Texas A & M , they're a leader in gastrointestinal disease studies. That group has been that for a long time and then University of California Davis is a leader in studying genetic diseases that longevity in certain dog breeds and certain dog types.
Dr. Judy Morgan 14:15
So that's what I love about the universities they each sort of have their their specialty that they're known for like I love University of Tennessee's endocrinology lab. I love that for for my for my adrenal testing in particular, Michigan State is well known for their thyroid testing as is Hemopet
Dr. Jean Dodds 14:36
Cornell and Taos and yeah,
Dr. Judy Morgan 14:39
yeah, so they all have their their different niche and, yeah, so I would I would say for people who are listening and they have an animal with a specific issue, you might want to you know, do a little internet search and see who is specializing in that because I live in North Carolina now and I know that at the veterinary school right here in North Carolina. They do. They have cardiologists that are really doing a lot of research with the Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, which is right up my alley. So yay, they're in my backyard. They're just impossible to get an appointment with. It's an eight month waiting list.
Dr. Jean Dodds 15:14
You know, Judy, what they have to do when they do that is find out if their pet is eligible for an ongoing clinical trial because there are definitely inclusion and exclusion criteria, but it doesn't hurt to check Absolutely,
Dr. Judy Morgan 15:27
it does not hurt to check. So a lot of them if your pet has already received certain treatments that will be excluded. You have to agree to certain treatments so but it is certainly worth if you're kind of hanging it on to the end of your rope. It's absolutely worth checking to see what's out there.
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Dr. Judy Morgan 16:34
So I know you also wanted to talk about some of the heritable bleeding diseases and some of the crossovers in a One Health perspective between humans and dogs. So let's talk about hemophilia. I, I the only reason that I know anything about these diseases because before I had Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, I had Dobermans and so Von Willebrand disease is way up there on the list of things that Dobermans have a very long list, but this was one that was way up there. And so I learned about it very early on in my career as a veterinarian, and I actually had to treat quite a few Dobermans, that would come in with spontaneous nosebleeds and, and that sort of thing when I was working in emergency. So tell us what's going on with that?
Dr. Jean Dodds 17:18
Well, very interestingly, when I was a veterinary student at the Ontario Veterinary College 1964, we graduated, by the way. And in the 50s. When I started doing that, I became curious about, I wonder if animals really do have as many diseases that we see in people. And I started thinking about that. And right under my nose at the Ontario Agriculture College, there was a colony of beagles for biomedical research. And that's another story we won't touch now. But those dogs had chronic Demodex mange, and they had bruising on their face and on their belly. And while we study them, they turned out to be the first animal model of factor seven deficiency clotting factor seven deficiency in the Beagle. And it was all through the commercial Beagle colonies. To the extent that some of the colonies, you know, that were raising research, beagles didn't know what to do with the positive ones. So they started selling them as a special group at more money because they had the factor seven deficient gene, because the half life of that clotting factor is only four hours. And so if you were looking at liver issues, for example, and it's made in the liver, you could use factor seven as a marker for what was going on with the liver cell. So here these quotes, genetically abnormal animals became more valuable than the normal ones. Anyway. So then I started thinking, well, maybe we can look for other diseases. And it was so amazing Judy, everywhere I looked I found them so hemophilia...Well, yes that well, but uh, well, not really. It was a it was an educational eye opener because we share One Health, right? Yep. We're mammals. So hemophilia a by Queen Victoria's famous in inbred quotes, quotes family. We had hemophilia a all over the world. Okay, was the most common form of hemophilia still is. The second form is hemophilia B, also called Christmas disease after the first human patient surname of Christmas, and hemophilia B accounts for about 15% of the hemophiliacs that are born today. Okay. So hemophilia a was easily found, and we found it immediately by looking at animals that had excessive bleeding. Like you mentioned the Doberman but that's a different disease. Okay. So then In 1952, they identified haemophilia B a factor nine deficiency in Los Angeles, of all places. And amazingly, seven years later, when I was a veterinary student in Guelph, we found the same disease and Cairn terriers of a very important bloodline. And whenever I was Sporting Dog with us, yes at that time, and I used to show visas and pointers and English setters when I was at the dog shows as a veterinary student, this famous breeder of Cairn terriers would pretend I wasn't there. She was afraid I might say something to her, that would be overheard, that would implicate her dogs in this disease. It's not she didn't create it. She didn't know it was a mutation. So seven years later, we had hemophilia B in the dog, like the human disease. And then in 1970, I've in the German Shepherd Dog from Germany, a whole line of shepherds, though were taken out of Germany because they had problems and sent to North America. They flooded the market of German Shepherd dogs, and they had Von Willebrand disease, or as a second breed, we wait for those that in was the Doberman like you said. So So where are what has happened today, with the advent of modern technology, nanotechnology for the treatment and the identification of these diseases, we now have CRISPR technology, CRISPR, which is the Nobel Prize winning technology developed by two ladies, Dr. Jennifer Doudna. And Dr. Emmanuel Charpentier. Charpentier in Paris and Doudna in California. And it's shared with Harvard and MIT, because Dr. Doudna did her graduate studies in Boston. So those people developed the process of gene rearrangement, gene editing and gene therapy. Today, we have gene therapy cures for hemophilia a in people in August of this year, and hemophilia B in people in November of this year. Both of those are used with non pathogenic parvo virus vectors. Can you believe that? It costs $22.5 million to do the cure for hemophilia A. and $35 million dollars for the cure for hemophilia B, it's more rare. You might say, Oh, my God, why is it so expensive? Well, the technology to develop all of this costs this much money. And somehow society has to bear that cost, how it's going to work, we don't know. But, Judy, the cost of treating and the suffering of these patients that are contintuously bleeding, can't work, some of them tried to commit suicide, they don't want to have any intimate relationships with their family, they're afraid of spreading the gene. That's much larger than having these genetic therapies introduced into our society to help.
Dr. Judy Morgan 23:25
That's pretty amazing. So this literally has been like a 75 year long journey getting to this point. So how does the how does the gene therapy work? Like, how does this cure work? And the other question I have, and you may or may not know the answer to this, how, how common are those diseases in people? We know they're kind of breed specific. We can probably see it in any breed. But we do know that we have breed specific genetics. How common is this in people?
Dr. Jean Dodds 23:58
These are, these are rare diseases. These are considered orphan diseases, in a sense. in veterinary medicine, there's no such thing as therapy for orphan diseases. Fortunately, in human medicine, if it's an orphan disease, we can get special funding to help with it. So they're rare, definitely rare. How does the genetic defect, first of all you can have hemophilias if you have a deletion of the gene that makes that clotting factor. Or you can have an abnormal gene. In other words, the factor that's made is dysfunctional, has the same clinical effect, but it's different. So what the gene editing technology does is it removes an abnormal gene if it's present, and exchanges it with a healthy one. If there's nothing there, they put it in. depends on what's going on with the patient. And by the way,
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:54
so where is it put in? Is this a bone marrow transplant or blood transplant?
Dr. Jean Dodds 24:59
It's put in put it into the chromosome. Into the DNA strands, you can go online and read about it. I sniff it out. This is so interesting, sir. It's amazing. Totally. That's what that's why it's so mind boggling. Yeah. And just before I forget, back in the years, when I was doing this, we found factor 10 deficiency, Stewart Power Factor, a rare human clotting defect and also in the American cocker spaniel. And now closer, fewer to the cocker spaniel breed, of course, and the party color. People said, Oh, it's not in us. It's only in the blacks and the black and tans, you know how that goes. And then factor 11 deficiency, which is a disease that does not cause bleeding until you have surgery. It's a disease of severe post surgical bleeding. And that was found in the English Springer Spaniel by our group. Wow. Wow. As a model, you know,
Dr. Judy Morgan 25:58
yeah, you know, I love there's a, there's a couple of books. And I think there's a couple of websites now that lists them, where you can look up a breed any breed, and look at all the different genetic diseases that exist within each breed. And when people ask you, what, what, what breed should I get, that's the healthiest. I'm like, well go look at the list, and see how many there are and then decide what you can live with. And, you know, when you get a mixed breed, it doesn't guarantee it, you could get the things from both sides. And both sides
Dr. Jean Dodds 26:31
work. Alright. Right. There's a new paper that just came out about how people perceive the value of genetic testing of the quotes designer breeds. That's pretty interesting. And the the company that has the highest number of genetic marker tests is now Neogen. I should say, Yeah. And I'm not promoting a particular company. It's a fact. Okay. And years ago, in Michigan, at their headquarters, I gave them a seminar about how animals and people are the same. And I showed them a picture of vaccine issues and other things. And the CEO, remembered that. And he wrote to me years later and said, This is really interesting, we should start doing that, because they were only doing a few human testing for like, gluten sensitivities at that time. So now you can go online and get a list of all the different diseases that they test for, and what genes are involved. Amazing, amazing. There's also other companies as well, you know, sure.
Dr. Judy Morgan 27:32
Yeah. I mean, the, the what we have access to now, I mean, thank thanks to people like you who had an interest in this and, you know, said, wow, what's going on with these dogs? You know, I'd probably walk by and go, Oh, that's interesting. But it's amazing. Jean, we could go on forever, you and I always have fun, and we always have so much that we can talk about, but this has been really interesting. Like, I've learned a lot here. And this has been really interesting. I, you know, I've always kind of looked at One Health and went eh. And you know, it is it is so critical that we look at what is going on. And I really like what you said about it's not even just medicine, it's agriculture. It's because I've really started looking at things like regenerative farming instead of what we're doing to destroy things. And so I it all fits in and I think that, you know, it's it's something that we all need to be more aware of. So for anyone who wants more information, www.hemopet.org Jean has amazing information there about testing for different diseases, just about different diseases in general. She has great tests like the nutriscan test for food intolerances or food sensitivities. You've got you've got books out, there's just so much information. Like if you are an info nerd, you could you could go down the rabbit hole of Hemopet.org and be there for months. So thank you very much, Jean. I really, really appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of your day.
Dr. Jean Dodds 29:14
Thank you. Thank you.
Outro 29:16
Thanks for listening to another great naturally healthy pets episode. Be sure to check out the show notes for some helpful links. And if you enjoy the show, please be sure to follow and listen for free on your favorite podcast app. We value your feedback and we'd love to hear from you on how we're doing. Visit Dr. Judy morgan.com for healthy product recommendations, comprehensive courses, upcoming events, and other fantastic resources. Until next time, keep giving your pet the vibrant life they deserve.
Disclaimer 29:44
The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform it is no substitute for professional care by a veterinarian licensed nutritionist or other qualified professional. You're encouraged to do your own research and should not rely on this information as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Dr. Judy and her guests express their own views experience and conclusions Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets Neither endorses or opposes any particular view discussed here.
