DNA-HCM screening

Maine coons, like all cats, are affected by a genetic, inherited, dominant-gened disease called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy or HCM. I advise everyone to google hcm in cats and in maine coons and read about it. I, and many other breeders, routinely screen our cats' hearts thru echocardiosonography, done by veterinary cardiologists. This is the most valuable tool, by far, for detecting clinical hcm and tells us the state of each cat's heart at the time of the echo. HCM can be early or late onset in a cat's life and it can be very mild to very severe and cause death. It can also never manifest, even though the cat has the genetic code for hcm and therefore technically has hcm. In humans, there are 400 different mutations that cause hcm. Recently, 1 mutation has been discovered for maine coons and there is a dna test for this mutation. Unfortunately, the geneticists who developed this dna test do not know what it implies. 34% of the over 1000 maine coons that have been tested have this 1 mutation. However, the vast majority of these dna-positive cats do not have any clinical hcm when they are echoed. The geneticists who developed the hcm-dna test are unable to predict what positive dna means, if this means 5% or 50% or 100% of dna-positive cats will go on to develop clinical signs of hcm, and if they do, when they will develop them or how mild or severe their hcm will be. Because this dna-hcm test is new, and has no long term studies or predictable outcomes for the short or long term, I have decided, until further studies are done, more information is available and there are real statistics to help me make informed choices, to not base my breeding program whatsoever on this 1 dna mutation test. Currently all of my cats are dna-tested but I will continue to rely on echocardiosonograms, which remain the only way to diagnose active, clinical hcm.